Blythe by Name
by ruby gillis
Summary: Shirley Blythe is getting married in the summer of 1932. His nieces and nephews don't like his fiancee, and decide to try and stop the wedding. But will their plan backfire? NOTE: not Cecilia or Alice compliant.
1. Sally's Epic

_Once upon a time, there was a very handsome man. Some people might think that he was handsome because he was their son, or brother, and they were biased. Some people also might think he was handsome because he was one of the famous Blythe family of Ingleside, who are all a very good looking people. It might sound like the thing of pride to say so, but it isn't really. Many people in the Glen and Four Winds District had said the same thing. It was simply an acknowledged fact. _

_This handsome man's name was Shirley Blythe, and he was a flying ace of the Great War. After the war he returned home and started the Four Winds Flight School and was celebrated all over the island for training some of the best pilots in the country. Shirley Blythe also ran pleasure tours, and for a small fee he took people up to see the red roads, and the neat fields, of Prince Edward Island by the air. He was very successful and he grew to be very rich, buying for himself the old Bailey house near Rainbow Valley, and renovating it to suit his bachelor tastes exactly. He filled it with all sorts of modern furniture, and built a garage for the all the cars he liked to drive, too fast, some said, around the Glen. The house had come with a pantry, but it was always empty, because Shirley never learned to cook. Susan Baker made supper for him every night, and sent one of the children up through Rainbow Valley to deliver it. When Susan died, everybody said that Shirley would have to get a wife—or else starve. _

_Shirley had vowed never to marry, but all the same, he did not starve. He bought a cookbook, and worked his way through the first few chapters, learning to make fish and the kind of stew that old Norman Douglas would have called 'macanacaddy.' But then, before he could move on to roasts, Shirley Blythe met a woman. _

_She was one of the tourists whom he took up in his plane and she had a slick, citified look about her. Shirley thought she looked very pretty, and as they were up in the air, he smiled at all of her oohs and ahs. When they were back on firm ground, he made a point to stop and ask her how she had liked the experience. "Oh, I loved it, Shirley," she said, familiarly, and he was puzzled, for he had not thought he knew her. The thought came to him that he wanted very badly to know this elegant woman in the drop-waist middy dress and the tiny, perfectly-trimmed navy blue cloche hat. _

"_Allow me to re-make your acquaintance," she said, offering chilly fingertips along with a warm smile. "I'm Irene English."_

_But Shirley Blythe had used to know her as Irene Howard. _

_Shirley had been at Queens Academy during the war, and then he had been overseas. When he had been home he had kept mostly to himself, so he only remembered Irene as his sister Rilla's friend. He did not know that Irene had nearly refused to sing at the concert in aid of Belgian children, or that she had been the one to cruelly break the news of Walter Blythe's enlisting to his sister, minutes before she had to perform in the concert. He did not know that Irene had a reputation for being cold and mean to other girls. _

_He only knew what she told him about herself: that she was a widow, and had been for five years. She had moved back to the Glen to live with her sick mother, but her mother was dead, too, now. She simply did not know what to do with herself, she said, and tears began to drop down her pretty pink cheeks. Shirley Blythe took her hand in that moment, he lost his heart. He could have had any girl on the Island, but his heart chose Irene English. _

_But because Shirley was Shirley, none of the Ingleside folk knew about his romance for months. Shirley was naturally close-mouthed about affairs like that and when he took Irene out, they drove to parties and things in fancier places, because Irene seemed to expect it. The family had no inkling that he was thinking of giving up his bachelor ways until one day in the spring when he asked his mother if he could have the little sapphire ring that Susan Baker had inherited from her own mother, and bequeathed on to him. _

"_Certainly you can have it," Anne Blythe said, looking down at her youngest son. "But the natural question is _why_ you want it, Shirley?"_

"_Oh," said Shirley, off-handedly. "I need it because I am going to ask a woman to marry me, Mother. I can't do that without a ring."_

_When Anne Blythe told the story later she said that it was the surprise of her life—so much so that she had to sit down, hard, all at once, the breath gone from her body in a great gasp. "Who are you going to marry, Shirley?"_

"_Irene Howard," Shirley said. And Anne was too shocked to do anything more but go and get the ring, and press it into his hand. _

_Irene accepted the Susan's ring with great joy, but also managed somehow to suggest that it was not exactly of the type that would suit the wife of such an important personage. The little sapphire was supplemented with two diamonds, one on each side, and just like that, Shirley the bachelor became Shirley the fiancé. A wedding was planned for mid-summer, 1932, and when Rilla Ford heard the news, she marched into the kitchen and made a cake, from an old Susan-recipe, beautifully iced. And then she sat down and ate every bite, bitter tears running into the icing. _

* * *

Sally Blythe had been sitting in the window seat of the parlor, writing so intently in her notebook for so long, that finally her grandmother's curiosity was piqued.

"What are you working at so diligently, Sally-child?" Anne Blythe perched on the seat next to the little girl with Jem's reddish hair, Faith's golden-brown eyes, and a full, quirky little mouth that belied a spirit all her own. "When school let out last week I seem to remember you saying something to the effect that you'd never open another book again."

"Oh, it isn't schoolwork I'm working on," said Sally, "I'm writing a story, Grandmother."

Anne had suspected as much, but she was not expecting the next words. "It's the history of our family, done in an epic style. I'm writing it as a wedding present for Uncle Shirley and…Irene. I am going to declaim it to them the night before the ceremony."

"Declaim it?" asked Grandmother Blythe, biting her lips in an attempt to keep from smiling. She knew from Sally's face that her 'epic' was no laughing matter—to her.

"Yes," said Sally seriously. "That's what you do with epics, you know. I thought it would be a nice gesture, and useful, because…Irene isn't one of us. She might like to know what kind of family she's marrying into. And to learn our history, and traditions."

"May I read what you have written so far?"

"Of course!" Sally handed the pages over, and Anne began to skim her words. She could not help from smiling in certain places. The part about her reaction to Shirley's romance was just as it _had_ happened, but Anne knew she could never let the child read that out loud to her daughter-in-law…to be? She could not help putting the 'to be?' on the end of that sentence, but she knew she shouldn't. It was as though she was hoping, in her heart, that it would not come to pass. And Anne did not hope that—exactly. For all Irene's failings, she could not deny that Shirley seemed happier than he had in many years when she was by his side. Even if Anne was not sure about Irene, she could not deny that Shirley loved her.

And _oh_, the part about Rilla and the cake! That was true, too, but it must be cut. The 'Spider' of years gone by had, after three children, grown a little bit more like the roly-poly baby she had once been, herself. It suited her—Rilla would always be a beautiful woman—but she was tender about her figure, and would not like the episode with the cake to become commonly known.

"Every real writer needs an editor," Anne said carefully to her granddaughter. "I used to write myself, Sally—so I know something about it. Would you like me to go over your epic, and suggest little changes here and there—to make it a _little _more professional-sounding?"

"I was going to ask if you'd do just that," Sally crowed. "But you mustn't change _too _much, Grandmother, or else it wouldn't be _my_ story." Anne smiled, thinking of authors all over the world who were quoting those same words to similar well-meaning folk. She promised gravely that she would try.

Sally looked pleased for a moment, and then her face grew troubled. "Oh, Grandmother, Uncle Shirley came in today to talk to us kids and told us it would mean a lot to him if we could start calling Irene '_Aunt_ Irene.' But somehow, I can't manage it. And I know that Walter and Cam and Helen feel the same way. We discussed it, and we even practiced saying 'Aunt Irene.' But it sounded so strange when we said it. 'Aunt' conjures up a picture in my mind, of a lovely, soft, _comforting_ sort of person. 'Aunt Nan, Aunt Una, Aunt Di, Aunt Rilla.' Irene is so—well, she's so thin, all sharp angles, and she's not exactly _warm_, Grandmother. She doesn't fit with the type of aunt I'm used to."

Anne knew what she meant. She and Gilbert had done something of the same exercise before Shirley's engagement dinner, practicing welcoming Irene to the family in appropriately hearty and sincere tones. They, too, had not quite been able to manage it, but the good thing about Irene was that she had gotten over the habit of her youth, of finding a slight in anyone's remarks. Nowadays, so much of her time was taken up with thinking of herself that there was hardly any left over for paying attention to the words that came out of other peoples' mouths.

But still—she must find a way to comfort the child. To Sally, the marriage that would take place at the end of the month would mark the end of an era. The days of bachelor Uncle Shirley, free-spirited, adventurous Uncle Shirley, would be over. No more could the children run down the valley to spend the night in the 'dorm room' at Caraway, on no more moment's notice than a whim. Shirley had seemed to belong to them all, before—now he would belong to Irene.

And of all the children, Sally had been Shirley's especial pet. He would come to Ingleside with his brown leather aviator's jacket slung over his shoulder and sing out,

_Come Josephine in my flying machine_

_Going up she goes! Up she goes!_

It was his idea of a joke, since Sally had been christened Cecilia Josephine Blythe, for Faith's mother and grandmother. His plane was even called for her—_Josephine_, known affectionately as 'Josey' to uncle and niece alike. Sally would run to get her own hat and scarf and give Josey's painted nose an affectionate pat before Shirley boosted her up. Lately, since Sally had turned eleven, Shirley had started letting her take the controls sometimes, and Sally had loved the feeling, especially Uncle Shirley's appreciative smiles at her smoothness, her daring.

But Irene had put a stop to that. She wasn't exactly jealous of Sally. It was just that she liked to be in the middle of everything, and couldn't bear being left out. If Shirley and Sally went up by themselves, Irene would be waiting for them in the grassy field that served as runway, when they landed. She always made a point to ask them if they'd had a good time, but it was with a suffering air, as though she herself had been in the depths of misery while they were soaring away in the clouds. Sometimes she was even crying.

Sally had a tender heart, and could not bear to see anyone upset, even if it was only feigned feeling. Irene's sulks ruined whatever fun she had had. She had told Uncle Shirley that he _must_ take Irene up, the next Saturday, to make up for their abandonment of her. Only Irene had liked it so much that she had wanted to go up the next Saturday, too. And the one after that. And soon, that was the habit—Irene and Shirley, instead of Shirley and Sally.

Two fat tears quivered on Sally's lashes. Anne wound her arm around the girl's suntanned shoulders. "Don't cry, dear one. You will always have a special place in your uncle's heart. Things with will calm down, and go back to the way they used to, after a little while. And who knows?" Anne dimpled. "There's still a while yet to the wedding. Maybe Irene will change her mind."

_I shouldn't have said that_, Anne thought, as soon as she had. But it was the feeling going through them all—Irene did seem very changeable in her moods, and once or twice, in the heat of an argument, she had threatened to do just that.

"And there's a silver lining to every cloud," Anne reminded Sally. "Because of this wedding, _everybody_ is coming to the Island. All the aunts and uncles. The Fords from Toronto—Jerry and Nan from New Brunswick—you'll have all the dear cousins around you to play and chat with, for a good long visit."

Sally brightened. That was true. The Ford and Meredith cousins would be coming to stay for a month, which seemed like an eternity to Sally. And they would be coming _soon_—the whole of Ingleside was in preparations for them. Aunt Rilla and Uncle Ken would open up the House of Dreams, again. Uncle Jerry and Aunt Nan would stay at the manse, with Grandmother and Grandfather Blythe and Aunt Una. Aunt Di would be home from the reservation school out west, where she taught the Indian children. The last time she had come home she had given Cam an authentic Ojibwa tomahawk, and Sally had gotten a beaded headdress that made her the envy of the other girls at the Glen school. Aunt Di would stay at Ingleside with them, and sleep in Sally and Helen's room, which had once belonged to her and Nan.

But Sally would not be sleeping there—though she loved to sleep with Aunt Di, who knew such creepy, hair-raising stories to tell and never kicked. Sally herself would be sleeping in the Ingleside garret, with all the cousins. It was a tradition—camp beds were set up for all nine cousins, and they would whisper through the darkness to each other, sometimes laughing so much that Grandfather Blythe would climb the stairs to tell them sternly, but with a twinkle in his eye, to keep it down to a dull roar so that others might sleep.

Sally hugged herself, her good spirits restored. She jumped to her feet and lifted the window seat to stow her notebook. "You always know just the right thing to say to lift a girl's spirits," she told her grandmother, giving her a rapturous kiss. "I was going to stay inside all day and mope, but now I feel like playing again. Oh, I can't believe Claire is going to be here—in less than a week! And Amy! And Avery, and Gil, and Wynnie! I'm going right down to Rainbow Valley with the others—we need to make plans. And Grandmother…?"

"Yes?"

"You won't tell anybody about my epic? Not just yet? I want to work on it a little bit more before I show it around."

"Certainly, dear heart. My lips are closed."

"And Grandmother…_might_ I take some of the cookies you made this morning with me when I go? I promise to share them, of course."

Anne answered in the affirmative, and Sally went out, humming. _Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up she goes, up she goes…_


	2. Cam's Plan

Sally took her cookies and went down from the house to Rainbow Valley, where her brothers and sister were waiting. She ate as many of the cookies as she could on the way down, not because she was greedy, but because with a brother growing as fast as Walter, and eating everything in sight, a girl had to make sure she got her fair share.

The other three Blythe children had been in Rainbow Valley all day, and Sally smiled to see them all in their familiar positions. Walter was fishing, with the rod and reel that Grandfather had given him for his thirteenth birthday last month. He had never really fished before but his movements were as quick and sure as if he had been doing it all his life. That was the way Walter was—sharp as a tack and good at everything he tried. Faith Blythe was fond of saying that Walt should have been named for his grandfather Meredith—because he was a 'Jack' of all trades.

Mother also worried sometimes that because Walt was good at so much—and had so many different interests—he would have a hard time trying to find direction in life. But that was only because she didn't take Walter seriously, like Sally did. When Walter said that he wanted to be a minister, like Grandfather Meredith and Uncle Jerry, Mother smiled and said that he was still young, and his feelings could change. Sally thought that Mother was a little discouraging because she already pitied Walter's wife and daughters, for not being able to dance, as part of a ministers' family.

But Sally knew that Walter meant it, and she was proud of him. The world was very large and vast to her, and whenever she was turned around by things, it was always Walter who set her right. He was such a friend to her, and she was glad to have a brother who was a friend, for Cam plagued the life out of her—plagued the life out of them all, at times.

Right now, Gerald Cameron Blythe was sprawled in the hammock that he had strung up between two maples, like a kitten in a pettable mood. Other people seeing him would have thought him a very calm, handsome boy, with smooth black hair and placid grey eyes. But Sally was not fooled. She knew that Cam's moods could change as quickly as a wind. He had what Grandmother called the Shirley temper—but in spades. One moment he would purr and help Sally with her writing; in the next his gray eyes would be black with fury, his hair bristling from his scalp like a cat's. It did not take much to set Cam off, and it always took him a while to calm down from one of his rages.

If he had had a _normal_ fiery temper, it would have at least been more expected. But Cam's anger ran cold, cold and deep as the sea. He could freeze out everybody—everybody, except Grandmother, who knew the particular way of soothing him, she said, because she had once been prone to tempests, herself. The others might beg and plead with Cameron to be sweet, to no avail, but Grandmother had only to press her hand to his shoulder, and he relented.

Between rages, Cam was not a devil. He had a wry humor and could make them all laugh, even serious, melancholy Aunt Una, who had been known to cry tears of laughter over Cam's impressions of Carter Flagg, or Mary Douglas. It was hard to reconcile that Cameron with the one who stormed around the house like a whirlwind, at other times. Cam had tried to explain it to Sally, once.

"It's like SOMETHING comes over me," he said. "Gets into my body and grabs me. I hear myself saying things, but I can't stop the words coming out of my mouth. They're over and done with before I can stop them."

"You'd better try harder," Walter said firmly. "You're getting an awful reputation as a troublemaker, Cam. Everyone believes it was you who pushed Becky Elliott into that mud puddle after church last week, when it was really Robbie Drew. But Robbie minds his temper, and you never do yours. If you don't mind your temper, soon people will believe you're bad all the way through."

"And if you don't mind your own business, Walter Blythe," said Cam, shaking with sudden anger. "You'll get a reputation for being a bigger busybody than Mary Douglas." He stamped away and there was no reasoning with him for the next day and a half.

Sally didn't mind Cam's moods for her own sake, but if only his toils weren't so hard on Helen! Helen was so sensitive, and when Cam wasn't happy, she couldn't be, herself. She loved him far more than anybody else, and Sally often remarked that it was crazy, because Cam did nothing to deserve it! But when she said it, Helen put her hand on her sister's arm and looked at her with hazel eyes that were filled with tears.

"Oh, Sally, don't _say_ that. Everyone deserves to be loved, you know. And I try to love Cammy extra hard because he needs it. Everyone always talks about what his tempers do them, personally—nobody ever thinks about what they do to Cam. He's always so unhappy after he flies out, because he feels so guilty. And if we love him, love him as much as we can—well, maybe he won't get mad so often."

"How did you get to be so wise, Helen?" Grandmother Blythe asked her, upon hearing that little speech. "You know at nine what it took me fifty years to learn."

Helen blushed. She hated being praised. She hated attention of any kind and seemed to draw into herself whenever anybody turned her way. How Jem and Faith Blythe had produced such a shy little mouse of a girl was as unfathomable as how two such sunny people could produce a _Cam_. "I suppose I learned it from you, Grandmother."

Helen was, just as her Uncle Walter had been, a hop-out-of-kin. But when Walter had been dark—his looks had been passed on to Cam—Helen was bright. She had a fine rosy skin, and hair the color of the gold strands in Faith's brown. Her eyes were a hazel that was ever changing, as though they wanted to reflect all the lovely colors they saw into the world back upon the people that Helen loved.

Just as Shirley loved Sally especially, Helen was drawn to her Aunt Una. When she had been a baby, Faith's arms had been full of other little ones, and so Helen had run to Una to comfort her, or soothe her bumps and scrapes. Their timid little souls _recognized _each other. "The stork meant her for you, Una," Faith said, without any jealousy. "But left her with us, by some mishap."

In the spring, Jem had plowed a corner of Rainbow Valley for Helen, she had set to work with packets of seeds and a little trowel. Helen, at nine, was something of a literalist, and it had been her goal to cultivate flowers of every color of the rainbow. Poppies next to marigolds, daisies, anemones, columbines and lavendar bloomed there, now, in a frenzy of gorgeousness. Helen had eschewed any rime or reason in laying out her garden, simply scattering seeds wherever she saw fit. The result was a dazzling array of color and scent. Cam lifted himself up on his elbow in his hammock and scowled.

"Helen, why the dickens didn't you plant any edibles?" he grumbled. "I'm as hungry as a lion."

_And twice as mean_, Sally thought, but she offered him a cookie, anyway. Cam tried to take two, but Sally pulled away. "You're eating Helen's share."

"I don't mind," Helen called, tossing a fair braid over her shoulder. "You can have mine, Cam."

Cam grinned, cheerful again, and did as his sister bade him. "Where were you?" he asked Sally, as he chewed. "We thought you'd decided to run away and join the circus."

"I was writing," said Sally, settling down on the grass. "And talking to Grandmother."

"What about?"

"Oh—Irene. _Aunt_ Irene, I mean. She was telling me that I shouldn't be upset, and that things will calm down with time. She also said—well. I don't know if I should repeat it. Grandmother got that look on her face, the one she gets when she thinks she's said something we shouldn't hear."

Cam sat up, and even Walter's curiosity was piqued. He set down his rod, and came toward the group. "You might tell us," he reproached his sister. "Otherwise you know something that we don't, and that's not fair."

"Well…" Sally hesitated, enjoying the way they were all hanging on her words. "I suppose it can't hurt. Grandmother was talking about the wedding, and she said, 'It's a long way off. There's still time for Irene to change her mind.'"

"Oh, would she _do _something like that?" breathed Helen. "Poor Uncle Shirley!"

"I don't see what's wrong with what Grandmother said," Walter pointed out. "It's just the truth. Irene could change her mind. You remember that fight they had last week, at Caraway, screaming and shouting with all the windows open so that everybody could hear. Irene said just that: that she _would_ leave him, and wouldn't even look back."

"It was more the way Grandmother said it," Sally said thoughtfully. "As though she were secretly hoping that…that Irene _would_ call it off. I don't think Grandmother is any more fond of Irene English than we are, though it's strange—I've never known grandmother not to like anybody before."

Cam settled back in his hammock, his arms behind his head. "Maybe Grandmother was hinting to you," he surmised. "Maybe she wants to do something to call it off and can't because she's a grownup, and grownups don't meddle in other grownup's affairs. Maybe she wants _us _to do something about it."

"Grandmother would never hint at a thing like that!" Sally cried.

But once Cam had put the idea in her head, it stayed there, rolling round and round and round. Hadn't there been a confiding sort of twinkle in Grandmother's eye? And she had shook her head, as if to say, _if only someone WOULD do something to stop it. _Hadn't she? Or was Sally only imagining it?

She shook her head. "She couldn't have meant that," she said. "Besides—I wouldn't even know _how_ to go about it."

"It would be easy," Cam pointed out. "All we would have to do is think up ways to show Irene that she isn't _right_ for our family. You know how she loves to do fancy things. We could make friends with her, a little, and get her to do all sorts of things she _doesn't_ like. Camping—eating off a cookstove—sing-alongs in the parlor. She hates those things. And she hates children, too. You know how she always wipes her hands after she touches us, like we're poisonous. We could make a point to be around her as much as we could and—and devil her, a little bit. Wipe mud on her dresses, and things like that. She'll be running for the hills."

"_Cameron_!" Helen sounded shocked. "If you keep talking that way, I'll—I'll tell Mother."

"Tattletale! Little baby!" he told her, fiercely, and Helen began to cry. Walter put an arm about his sister and glared at Cam defiantly.

"Helen is right. We couldn't do a thing like that. _Even_ to Irene—even if she's so cold to us. It would be—well, it would be a sin. If God wants them to be married, they'll be married. If He doesn't, it will fall through on its own."

"But the Lord helps those who help themselves," quoted Sally. "The Bible says that, too, doesn't it, Walt? And besides—it wouldn't be like we were intending to drive them apart. It's really more like a test. If Irene _could_ be driven so easily away as Cam says, then she doesn't love Uncle Shirley enough to be his wife. And Uncle Shirley is so good to us—all of us—shouldn't we look out for him?"

Sally had her brother, there. Walter chewed his lips. "It would be a terrible thing if Uncle Shirley married a woman who didn't love him," he said, gravely. "That would be almost like a sin in itself."

They siblings fell silent for a moment, each of them thinking of something Irene Howard English had done against them, at some point or another. Sally was remembering how Irene had not seemed to appreciate the poem she had written her upon the occasion of her engagement. It had been one of Sally's best, and everyone else had complimented her on it. But while she had been reading it to Irene, Irene had been looking out the window, even jumping up at one point to refill her glass of lemonade! Cam was thinking of the way that Irene always called him handsome in that condescending tone of voice, as though she were bestowing a great honor on him by saying it. Cam _was _handsome, but he hated anyone remarking on his looks, and it had sent him into a rage. Walter was thinking how she had turned up her nose at the perfectly good trout he had caught for dinner two nights ago. And Helen, sweetheart that she was, was alone thinking of Uncle Shirley.

She saw her jolly uncle broken down into a sorry, sorry man because Irene did not love him, after all. She saw all the laughter gone from his face. Oh, if she could prevent it with her life's blood, she would! Dear, _dear_ Uncle Shirley deserved a woman who would treat him with all the loving care in the world!

"As long as we think of it as a test," Walt said, carefully, "Like you said, Sally—I don't see that we're really doing any wrong. We'll just have to be sure that we aren't being _mean_—that we're just being a little more _ourselves_, in the way Irene wouldn't like."

Cam turned to Helen. "It won't work if _she_ tattles."

Helen drew a deep breath. "I won't tattle," she said. "I—I won't participate, though. You can try your tricks, but I am just going to try to love Aunt Irene _hard_—because I think that has just as much a chance of winning her over as anything else."

"The cousins will help us," Walt decided. "They won't like Irene anymore than we do."

"So it's decided," said Cam, rising from the hammock. "Let's shake on it."

They all shook hands in turn, even Helen, though she looked wary. The gong for dinner rang out over the afternoon, and Cam turned to his brother. "Race you!" They started for the house. But Helen hung back, twisting the end of her braid.

"Sally," she whispered, her eyes big. "Are—are you sure you want to do this?"

Poor little Helen. She mustn't worry herself sick, or mother would notice, and the secret would come out. "I'm surer than sure," said Sally, lightly. "Don't fret, puss. It will all turn out the way it's supposed."

"I suppose," said Helen, but she still did not look convinced.

Sally decided to cheer her up. "Four more days—and then the cousins," she whispered. And it was just the thing. Helen smiled, and it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.


	3. The Cousins

The Fords and Merediths arrived on the correct day, at the appointed hour, and the cousins fell all over each other, in a passion of happiness. They had not been all together like this for some time, and they were curious to see the changes in each other. A luau was planned, in the Ingleside yard, to give them time to indulge their curiosity and get used to the idea of being together again. _And_ to give the boys and girl who had not already done it a chance to meet Irene.

Irene looked very beautiful that night. Even Sally had to admit it. She was dressed like a movie star, in a long peach gown that came high up her neck, but plunged nearly to the waist in the back. A fringed sash went around her waist, and drapey sleeves flowed over her slim white arms to the elbow. Her sandy hair had been set in marcel waves and pinned back into a low chignon at the nape of her neck. Her fingernails, and lips, were a crisp, vibrant red.

Sally saw the cousins gasp to themselves at the sight of her. Even the Toronto Fords had never seen somebody so glamorous. For a moment, she was almost proud of Irene—but then Irene spoiled it, by clapping her hands in a childish gesture and exclaiming, in a bright, fake voice,

"So these are the rest of Shirley's dear little nieces and nephews! What a _darling_ crowd of babies you are!"

A coldness fell over the group of young people. They were, most of them, just at that particular age in which being called a 'baby' rankles most. A small flame of dislike kindled in heart after heart, and several of the boys and girls resolved that they would rather _die_ than let Uncle Shirley marry this woman. And they had not even been told of the plan!

But Uncle Shirley only smiled indulgently at them, as if to say, _forgive her, she knows not what she does. _He took Irene's arm and led her over to the little group. "I want to introduce you all to my wife-to-be," he said, bursting with pride. "And I want to do it properly. Line up, fellows! Fall in!"

Uncle Shirley was always marshaling as though he were a general and they his troops. The cousins lined up, according to age, shoulders back, chests out. Grins on every face.

At the head of the line was Gilbert Ford. He was twelve years old, the oldest son of Rilla and Kenneth Ford, with dark good looks, in the style of his father. He and Walter, as the two oldest of the next generation, were especial friends, and had a friendly rivalry that existed all the way back to their diaper days. The only tension in their relationship came from the fact that at times, Gil's city-boy ways seemed to suggest that _he_ was sophisticated, and the rest of them, a little countrified. If Gilbert had known about this he would have been hurt, for he considered himself at least an honorary son of his mother's native land.

After Gil came Claire Meredith, who was just Sally's age, exactly. At eleven Claire resembled her mother to such an extent that Irene didn't even have to ask who she belonged to. "It's Nan Blythe, all over again!" she simpered. "Just as proud as her mother, too. What a saucy little lass you are! With that precious 'Shirley nose' in this air!" Sally squeezed her cousin's hand, hard, at the warning flash of Claire's lovely brown eyes. Claire was her especial friend among the cousins, and Sally knew her heart almost as well as she did her own. Claire wasn't especially proud—but she was proud enough that she did not want to be called it.

But if Claire was angry at that, she was destined to get even angrier. Her brother, Avery Meredith, aged nine, was next in line. When Irene saw him she screwed up her face in surprise, and Sally immediately wanted to kill her. It wasn't that Avery was _ugly_—he _wasn't_—but it was true that he was not as handsome as you would expect the son of Jerry and Nan Meredith to be. His curly brown hair was frightening in its abundance, and seemed to be trying to escape his head. At gunpoint, Sally _might _have admitted that Avery's pale grey eyes were a little goggly, and that the round spectacles he wore made them look even more so. But both of these were nothing compared with the tragedy that was his nose. It was decidedly _not_ Shirley, long and fat and faintly snubbed. There had never been a nose like that in the family to anyone's knowledge. They simply could not fathom where it had come from.

Irene quickly rearranged her figures and shook the hand that Avery was proffering. "What a handsome little boy you are!" she said, and if she had not said it, Avery would never realize that she had thought him ugly. But since she mentioned it, so pityingly, he could not help but know, and his bluish-pale face became red with mortification.

Last in line were the Ford twins, Amy and Selwyn, a girl and boy of eight, rather prone to being forgotten by their elder cousins, but staunchly represented by Helen, who loved them both so much that she was beaming with pleasure as she stood between them. If Irene disliked children, she especially hated 'babies,' which they appeared to be to her. She greeted the Ford twins absently and fluttered off toward the crowd of grownups that were standing a ways off. The cousins saw her embrace Rilla Ford with all the exuberance of true friendship.

"You're looking so—_prosperous_—Rilla," they heard Irenie call out, and the cousins blanched as one unit.

"Mother already hated her, before that," Wynnie Ford muttered.

Uncle Shirley, who was still standing with them, turned sharply. "What was that, Selwyn?"

"N—nothing, Uncle Shirley." The boy blinked and blinked, confused. He had never heard his uncle take that tone before.

Shirley seemed to catch himself. His face turned gentle, again.

"I'm sorry, pals," he told them. "Irenie is deathly nervous about seeing everybody tonight. When she's nervous her words get away from her a little. She wants so badly to make a good impression on the folks—you especially, since she knows how much you mean to me. Claire and Sally, I believe there was actually a question she wanted to ask you. Irene, darling! Didn't you forget something?" he gestured to the oldest girls, meaningfully, and Irene floated back to him.

"Oh, _that's_ right," she said, taking Shirley's arm. She smiled sweetly at the cousins. "I had wanted Rilla and Nan to be my bridesmaids—I would have asked Diana, too, but the dresses are pink, and red hair!—especially that particular _shade_ of red! And Rilla said she wasn't _quite_ sure she wanted to do it, even though we were _such_ friends in our salad days. But I suppose she's feeling a little self-conscious about her—"

"Irene would like to ask you two if you would be bridesmaids at our wedding," Shirley finished, before she could say a word more.

Claire and Sally looked at each other. Bridesmaids! Never before had they been given such an important part in anything. But Sally was thinking of her plan, and Claire, who did not know of the plan, was thinking that she would rather Uncle Shirley be a bachelor for a thousand years than have him marry this terrible, supercilious woman!

Wouldn't then, it be a little like a _lie_ to stand up for them at their wedding and pretend to wish them well? But Uncle Shirley was smiling at them—they could see he wanted it. And, Sally reminded herself, if their plan succeeded—if Irene failed their test—there wouldn't _be_ any wedding, and it would all be a 'moot point,' as Dad would put it.

"We'd love to do it…Irene," Sally said. And then when her uncle shot her a beseeching look, she added, "_Aunt_ Irene." But she coughed a little on the first word. It hurt her throat coming out.

* * *

"She's perfectly awful," said Claire Meredith, hugging her knees to her chest.

The party was over, and the cousins were up in the Ingleside garret, supposed to be sleeping, but really talking things out amongst themselves. It had started to rain, and thunder sounded from far away. Any other garret would have seemed like a miserable place on that night. But the Ingleside one wasn't.

All the 'junk' had been moved to the cellar, and the walls painted a clean, bright yellow. Eight camp beds had been set up, against the east and west walls—the twins shared—and covered with colorful quilts. Una Blythe had made one for each child on the occasion of his or her birth, with the child's names embroidered on them in silk thread. She had also made the striped curtains that hung at the dormer windows set into the roof. Beneath each of these windows was a window seat, where the cousins kept their clothes and toys. The roof was too sloped to accommodate a normal bookshelf, but Grandfather Blythe had made a long, low one for them to keep their books on. And there were heaps of books—from the twins' old picture books to the big girls' _Nancy Drews _and the boys' _Swallows and Amazons _series.

Around the bookshelf were heaps of cushions—also Una-made—and on the walls were drawings and paintings of all sizes. At least every child had one drawing up there, but most of them had been done by Avery Meredith, who had a talent that impressed even the grownups. A rag rug, in reds and blues, vintage of Marilla Cuthbert, covered most of the pine board floor and there were mysterious trunks stacked up in the corners, holding Christmas ornaments and wedding dresses, and funny hats from a bygone century. Poking through those trunks on gloomy afternoons was a favorite past time of every single one of the cousins.

All in all, it was as cheerful a chamber as could be found anywhere. It was only the mood tonight, that was traditionally garretish. Every boy and girl—Blythe, Meredith, and Ford alike—felt a little bit weary. The grownups had been so busy catching up with one another that they had not paid Irene enough attention to satisfy her craving for it. She had sulked for a while, and then she had made a point of storming off. But nobody noticed, and so she foisted herself on the children, who had gathered in Rainbow Valley, sitting down right in the middle of them and rattling on and on. She had talked about her dress, how much it cost, how other people always looked jealously at it, how she thought that she _might_ look a bit fat in it—she waited with an eyebrow raised until they told her she wasn't—and how it, like her wedding dress, had come from Boston. Her chatter had been endless, and it was not until it was time for the children to go upstairs to bed that they had been able to be alone, to talk things over.

"She's horrid," pronounced Claire certainly. "Those—_things_—she implied about Mother and Aunt Rilla! I don't see what Uncle Shirley could see in her."

Gilbert Ford, a reasonable enough fellow, decided to play devil's advocate. "She's awfully pretty," he pointed out. "Maybe even the prettiest woman I've ever seen. Uncle Shirley probably likes her for that."

Claire punched her cousin on the arm. "How could you imply Uncle Shirley would stoop so low?"

"It isn't low." Gil flashed a grin. "If I was a little older, I'd probably marry her myself."

"Oh, Gilly," cried Helen, who looked like a wraith in her white nightgown. "You have too much sense for that."

"She's good-looking, is all I'm saying," Gil said, holding up his hands.

"But she doesn't look like a _wife_," said Walter, critically. "At least, not the kind of wife I'd picture for myself. Or the kind I'd picture for Uncle Shirley. Irene looked like she was going to a dance, not to a backyard barbecue. Mother and Aunt Nan and Aunt Rilla were wearing cotton skirts and plimsolls."

"Our whole liveth are going to be changed," lisped Amy Ford, mournfully. "Oh, I wish _thomebody_ could do _thomething._"

The four Blythe children looked at each other. "There's something we _can_ do," said Cam, and he filled them in on the plan.

They had respected some resistance—Claire and Avery were minister's children, after all—but they met with none. Irene English was _just that awful_. The cousins thought it a capital idea, and got right into the spirit of things.

"Irene said tonight that the only thing she worried about was being so far from the city," pointed out Wynnie Ford. "We could mope and complain a lot about how boring things are around here, in the country. Then she'd think twice about living here herself."

"She _hates_ kids—we could make a point to run down to Caraway whenever we know she's there," said Claire, with relish. "She'll think we'll be running in and out all the time and that will put her guard up."

"We could talk about the other women Uncle Shirley has loved," said Cam.

"_What_ other women?" asked Sally.

"We'll make them up," said Cam, easily.

"But that's lying." Avery was unsure.

Walter looked like he was deep in thought. Finally, he pounded his fist in his hand, like he had seen his father do, and stood. He was getting to be so tall—next summer he would not be able to stand straight like that without bumping his head on the ceiling.

"I think we should get one thing clear at the start," he said forcefully. "This is a very serious matter. If it wasn't serious, we wouldn't _need_ to do all these things to drive Irene away. Uncle Shirley is in grave danger of ruining his life—ruining it entirely. _Till death do us part_, the marriage vows say. If we don't act, Uncle Shirley could spend the rest of his life married to a woman who is shallow, cold, unfeeling, and gossipy. A woman who _can't _love him like we do—like he deserves to be loved. And I think that desperate times call for desperate measures. Lying is a grave sin—except when it can save someone else from an even darker fate. We need to decide here and now that we will do whatever it takes to accomplish—victory!"

"Victory over what?" said a voice from the stairs. Aunt Di was there, in her kimono, and she had caught the tail end of Walter's impassioned speech. She grinned, tossing her hair over her shoulders.

"You have a future as a general," she told Walter. "I don't even know what you're talking about, and I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, for it. Move over, kiddies, and let me join the pow-wow. There. Now, what are you all talking about?"

Uneasy glances were exchanged. The cousins loved Aunt Di—she was like an honorary member of their group. She was so understanding, and could help unknot the most tangled problems. But they had the feeling that even though she didn't like Irene, either, Aunt Di might have a problem understanding this.

Walt turned to the cousins and made a furtive gesture with his hand—he crossed and uncrossed his fingers, twice. It was a secret signal that they shared amongst themselves, it meant: _a secret_. Even the twins understood that they must keep mum.

But Aunt Di was watching them, waiting for an answer, and so Sally blurted, "We're planning a game between us and the Douglas kids. Cam's going to race Marty Douglas and he—he—he cheats! We were discussing strategy."

Aunt Di watched them a moment longer. "Well, tell me when it goes off," she said, finally. "I'll come and cheer you on. Now, tell me, how are all of you? We didn't have much time to talk tonight, with Irene monopolizing you. Any stories—feats of daring, or danger—to tell your nice maiden aunt, so that she might re-live, through you, the days of her own youth?"

"Gil hath a girlfriend," piped up Amy, giggling. The fact sent a ripple through the gaggle of boys and girls. Never before had any of them had one of _those_. It was a new facet to their friendship, and a little thrilling. But Aunt Di received it with solemn air.

"Many felicitations and much luck to you, Young Gilbert," she said gravely. "Is she a pretty thing? Can she cook? Will her father give you a nice dowry?"

Gilbert had turned beet red. "She's all right," he muttered.

"Shining words for this paragon of virtue! What, pray tell, is her name? Is it something fluid and melodious, like the very spring breeze?"

"Her name is Mildred Hodge," said Gilbert, and they all howled.

Gilbert was tired of being the only one picked on. "Walt's sweet on Lucy Wright," he said, defiantly, and Sally pricked up her ears. Walt _was_? She saw Cam looking just as astonished. Could Walter have been keeping a secret from them?

"Granddaughter of the fair Diana Barry, my dear namesake," applauded Aunt Di. "I like little Lucy exceptionally much. She is such a spirited, pretty little thing, with her raven curls. What I'd give for curls like those! Well, the sweethearting has begun, and you'll all act about half-near crazy from here on out because of it."

Helen looked worried. "Will we ever settle down again?"

"Yes," sighed Aunt Di. "When you're forty or so, Helen o'mine."


	4. The Plan in Action

"What on earth is that Irene is wearing?" asked Faith Blythe, chancing to glance out of the window to see the woman striding up from Rainbow Valley. In most of her dress, Irene looked completely normal—for Irene. She was wearing one of her fashion-plate gowns, a filmy, lavender chiffon concoction, that clung to her soft curves in a most alluring way. On her hands were little netted gloves, in a deep purple, and her hair was waved and loose about her face. But on her head! Irene was wearing a hat that made Faith gasp, and then laugh out loud. She had never _seen_ a hat like that. If it could even be _called_ a hat!

It looked to have had a previous life as a man's straw boater. But there its resemblance to anything hattish ended. From fore to aft, from brim to crown, this hat was covered with garish fake flowers. Orange, yellow, a sickly green—and was that a motheaten robin nestled among them? Red ribbons cascaded down from the back of the brim, over Irene's chiffoned shoulders, clashing horribly with the pale lilac fabric of her dress.

What, Faith wondered, had possessed her to wear such a thing? Had the woman lost her mind? Was she crazy, on top of everything else?

"I made it for her, Aunt Faith," said Claire Meredith, sitting at the kitchen table, swinging her legs happily as she licked the bowl in which her aunt had just been mixing batter for a cake. The ribbons in her velvety brown hair matched the ones on Irene's hat, which should have been enough to give her away. "The hat was an old one of grandfather's," she explained. "And I found the flowers and things in a box in the garret."

"_You're _responsible for that abomination, Clairie?"

"You don't like it?" Claire asked, innocently.

"_Like_ it! Dear heart, it looks like a circus exploded on her head!"

"It's supposed to look that way." Claire delicately licked her spoon. "It's _avant-garde_," she explained, with the perfect French flourish. Then she grinned. "Auntie Irene didn't like it when she first saw it, either. But I had worked so _hard_ on it, Aunt Faith. And I was just _devastated_ that she didn't want to wear it. Uncle Shirley saw that I felt bad, so he whispered in her ear. And Irene said, 'Oh, all right,' and put it on and hasn't dared to take it off, since."

Claire made this little speech in a completely guileless tone of voice, but there was some hint of mischief in her grin that made Faith look at her more closely. "I didn't know you were so interested in millinery, darling."

"I am," Claire cheerfully assured her. "I just love it. I suppose I'm going to be a famous fashion designer one day, in Paris or something."

"Or something," said Faith dubiously, peeking back out the window at Irene. "Goodness, her dress is sopping wet! Look at her, trying to wring it out."

"Oh," remarked Claire, with a dismissive wave of her small white hand. "Well, I expect that's because the boys took her boating on the Glen Pond this afternoon.

"Irene, boating with the boys?"

"It's so hot today," said Claire, in tones of perfect angelic delight. "Irene complained of it and the boys offered to take her out. 'That's a capital idea,' Uncle Shirley said, so she had to go. It would have been rude of her to refuse. And how could poor Cam know that when he stood up, it would tip them all out?"

"I think he might know from experience," Faith guessed. "He's done it enough times before. When this cake is in the oven I'll go upstairs and find a nice dress for Irene to wear while her gown dries. It's getting cool, and she'll catch a chill going around like that."

"I already offered her one of Grandmother's old housecoats," Claire told her aunt, using her finger to scrape up the batter that her spoon had missed. "She said she didn't want to wear it. I guess she's too good to wear clothes that didn't come from Boston. She'd rather be all wet." Claire neglected to tell her aunt that the housecoat she had found for Irene came straight from the rag-bag, missing a couple of buttons and splotched with ink and that nobody in their right mind would have wanted to wear it. Claire lifted the bowl up to her face to use her tongue to reach the places the spoon had missed, and also, to hide her triumphant grin. When she set it down again, she asked, "When the cake is done, Aunt Faith, might I come back in and have a piece?"

"Not until after supper," Faith told her. "This cake is for your Uncle Carl. He's coming in tonight."

"Uncle Carl! Really? But I thought he couldn't get away from his work at the university?"

"It appears, after all, he can," said Faith. "Now give me that bowl. There's no more batter in it. You're just scraping away the paint by going over and over it like that."

Claire handed over the bowl and ran out. She waved in a broad arc to Irene as she passed her, and called out in a booming voice, "_Hi_, Auntie!" Faith watched this scene, her golden eyes growing suspicious. What on earth were the children up to? Yesterday they wouldn't go near Irene on penalty of death, as though she was infected with a dread disease, and they were afraid of catching it. Now, a scant twenty-four hours later, they were so friendly with her? Going _boating_ with her? Calling her not just 'aunt' but 'auntie'—a title reserve for their favorite of that ilk? Faith narrowed her eyes and turned, in time to see Helen come into the kitchen.

"Stop right there," she commanded her younger daughter, catching her arm on the way out the door. "Helen Cornelia Blythe, I want to know what's going on and I want to know _right now_."

Helen looked anxiously at her mother, and Faith remembered how sensitive the child was, how frightened she got when anybody spoke to her sharply. Poor little bird! She pulled Helen to her chest and stroked her fair hair for a moment, thinking what a pity it was that her daughter was not surer of herself, that she had no confidence to speak of. Faith knew that this was not one of Helen's own failings, that it must be something of her own fault, and that to combat it, she must be sure to treat Helen with extra gentleness.

But still, she was determined to get to the bottom of this. "Are you children deviling Irene in some way?" Faith wanted to know. "Tell me the truth, Helen. What are you imps planning?"

Helen had her face pressed to her mother's shoulder, so Faith could not see the struggle that played upon her face. Helen had never—_never_—lied to Mother before! And she didn't want to do it, now. But she had promised the others—she had shaken on it—that she would not 'tattle.' Was answering a direct question tattling? She did not think it was.

But all the same Helen knew that the others would not see it that way. If she told her mother the truth, everyone would be angry with her for spoiling things. They would shun her, terribly, and if there was one thing Helen feared above all else, it was that people should stop loving her. Perhaps they would even turn against her, and 'devil' her the way that they were deviling Irene! She blanched in horror at the thought, and quickly composed herself. When she lifted her face to meet her mother's searching look, her eyes were bleak, but she was determined: she should not let the others down.

"We're not planning anything, Mother," Helen whispered. "We only—want—to _try_ to make friends with Aunt Irene because Uncle Shirley wants us to and we love him." _There_! There some truth in that sentence. They _did_ love Uncle Shirley, and Helen at least, sincerely _did_ want to make friends with Aunt Irene. Surely the lie could not count for so much when those other things were true?

Faith searched her face a moment longer, and then relaxed her hold into a hug. Of course Helen would tell her the truth—Helen the sweet, Helen the good. She whispered into her daughter's shell-like ear, "If you can sneak away in an hour, come back in and I'll give you a piece of cake."

Helen's face was astonished at the very idea. "But I couldn't, Mother! That cake is for Uncle Carl's. And if the others don't get a piece, too, it wouldn't be fair me to have one."

"Oh, Helen," sighed Faith, despairingly. "You are the most _exasperating_ child."

* * *

Sally read the next chapter of her epic that night in Rainbow Valley. It was called 'Legacy of the Blythe Family,' and based heavily on the Biblical book of First Chronicles, telling who the sons of everybody were, and peppered liberally with _begats_. At one point, when the Lord 'slew' Susan Baker, the grownups had to turn their faces away and hide them in their hands, but by the time Sally had finished they had composed themselves again. Everyone clapped heartily for her handiwork, as Sally took, what she thought, was a very restrained and writerly bow.

"I thought of spicing up the names," she confessed. "The ones in the Bible were so interesting. _Jehoshaphat_ and _Zerubabbel_ and _Azrikam_. Sally and Jem and Nan just don't compare to them. But this is a history, not a novel, and I had to restrict myself to recorded fact. Although Mother, if you ever have another child, won't you let _me _name it?"

"Sally, if that very unlikely thing ever happens, then you may," her mother told her. "I will even agree to Zerubabbel for this mythical brother or sister of yours. That is how sure I am it shall never come to pass."

"I think we have some fine names in our connection already," said Uncle Carl, who had been plied with cake and was now stretched out languorously on the grass. He was wearing a khaki safari jacket, the kind with many, many pockets, and when the children had run up and hugged him, earlier, he had cried out, remembering a specimen of beetle he had never seen before, found on the way home from the train station, and secreted in one of them. If _Cam_ had brought a heap of bugs inside the house Mother would have walloped him, but if Uncle Carl did it, it was fine. Although, Sally noticed, Mother never did let Uncle Carl sleep at Ingleside. "We have Diana, goddess of the hunt." Aunt Di smiled at him, through the deepening darkness. "We have Una, which is a name I have never come across except in _our_ Una. And we have Thomas Carlyle, which I've always thought a fairly distinguished name, myself."

"And we have Irene," said Shirley, who was sitting with his arm around her. Irene had been uncharacteristically quiet all evening, and it must be admitted that even though Sally's epic was written especially for her, most of the Blythes and Merediths and Fords had forgotten she was there. Now that they remembered, a little of the languid beauty of the night was gone. The grownups felt it and were ashamed that they should feel it. The children, who were young enough still to believe all of their passions were valid, felt it and resented her for it.

Carl rolled over onto his back and studied the moon, a tiny sliver of white low down in the sky. "That moon belongs to you, Di," he smiled. "For Diana was also the Roman goddess of the moon. 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight,' too—we'll have fine weather tomorrow. Kids, how about a visit to the seashore in the morning? Isn't that a great idea?"

"It is," laughed Walt. "So much of a good one that we already asked Aunt Irene to take us."

Uncle Carl held up his hands. "I know when I'm not wanted," he said, with mock crestfallenness. "Irene, you popular woman, usurping my place."

The darkness was growing deeper in the pools and hollows of the Valley, and they could not see Irene's face. But they thought they heard her sigh, as if to say Carl could have his place, because she did not want it. .


	5. A Trip to the Shore

Before bedtime, the cousins gathered in a circle on the rag rug on the garret floor to discuss the events of the day. "All right," said Cam, in a pair of Jem's old pajamas, a lock of dark hair falling down over his eyes, "What kind of progress have we made today, in Operation Anti-Irene?" Cam grinned, liking the play on words. If they were _anti-_Irene enough, she would never become an _auntie_.

"She hated wearing my hat," said Claire in tones of deepest pleasure. "When she looked at it, she actually sneered. Uncle Shirley caught her and he looked _so _disapproving."

"But then, at dinner, when Uncle Shirley saw she was still wearing it he laughed and went over and kissed her," Helen pointed out. "It ended up making him even happier with her in the end."

"She was mad as a March hare when I knocked us all into the lake," Cam said, laughing over the memory of Irene streaming water as she climbed in an ungainly fashion back into the boat.

"But when she came back, she looked so pitiful all wet that Uncle Shirley was extra-tender toward her," pointed out the ever-practical Helen. "And he was a little upset with you, Cam. Uncle Shirley is _never_ mad at any of us, but he was today."

Claire hugged her knees to her chest. "It's not working," she said dismally. "Helen is right. We're just driving Irene right into Uncle Shirley's arms. He's so pleased with her because she's making an effort and he's mad at us because he thinks we're naughty."

"Well, there's always tomorrow, at the beach," Gilly pointed out. His sunny disposition would never let him dwell on the negative for too long. "We'll just have to renew our efforts. If Irene snaps at us, Uncle Shirley will see what she's really made of, and he'll be mad at _her_. We'll just have to be sneaky—and we will be naughty, or at least naughty enough to push her over the edge. Can we do that?"

Cam's grey eyes flashed with a mischievous light. "Oh, I think we can manage," he said.

* * *

It was the perfect day for a trip to the seashore, but none of the cousins were enjoying it. They had been at the beach for two hours, and into it they had crammed so much naughtiness that they were a little afraid of themselves. The big boys had started things off by immediately swimming out as far as they could, past the shallows and the sandbars to the deep, cold water. Whenever they did this around their parents, they were immediately admonished for going too far and hailed back in. But Irene simply lay back on her beach blanket and took no notice.

"I'm worried about the boys," Sally said, pointedly. "I think they're too far out."

Irene licked her finger and turned the page of her fashion magazine. "You're too young to go about worrying all the time," she said dismissively. "It will give you wrinkles."

"We're _eleven_," said Claire scornfully.

Irene shrugged. "It's never too early to start being careful about your skin. Especially when you've such a horrid tendency to freckle, like you have."

Irene had shaded her own face from the sun with a floppy straw hat, dyed red to match the bold Mexican print on her two-piece swimsuit. That swimsuit was _nothing_ like the one Sally's mother wore to the shore, which was black and serviceable and came down over her hips. Irene's was cut low at the next and high at the leg and showed a shocking two inches of midriff in between. It had caused a sensation up and down the beach when Irene had removed her red and white caftan. And Irene had seemed to notice, and appreciate, it. Her lipsticked mouth had curved in a smile as she arranged her sunglasses on her nose, and her body on the blanket in a way that showed off her long, tanned legs.

Besides those admiring glances, Irene had seemed to notice very little else. She had not looked up when Walt had dunked Gilbert under the water so long that he began to flounder in an attempt to get up to the surface. She had only grunted when the twins' beach ball had landed on top of her magazine, flicking it disdainfully away with one hand. When Cam had come up from the water, shaking himself like a dog to scatter droplets all over her, and the page, she had only said, without lifting her eyes from the page,

"Really, Cameron. There's no need to be so _ungainly_."

Sally looked helplessly at Claire. What was to be done? How could they succeed in annoying Irene enough to run off if she refused to _be_ annoyed? Claire blew her hair from her face exasperatedly, and then, had an inspired idea. Her eyes lit up, and she jumped to her feet, motioning for Sally to do the same. "Aunt Irene!" Claire shrieked, in a terrified tone of voice. "There's a sand crab right near you!"

"Hmm?"

"A little fiddler crab! Scuttling toward the blanket. With terrible, terrible claws. It's going to _pinch_ you!"

"It won't bother me if I don't bother it," yawned Irene, stretching her arms over her head. "And I don't intend to bother it. It will go away."

Helen had been building a sandcastle nearby, and now she got to her feet, warily. She had not inherited any of her Uncle Carl's love for creepy-crawly things. It made Helen feel horribly guilty, that she was sometimes not as happy to see Uncle Carl as she should be, for fear of what fearsome creatures might be attendant on his person. And crabs were the worst—with their claws and their goggly eyes!

"I don't see any crabs, Sally," she said, peering at the sand. "Where is it?"

Claire's shoulders fell. "It's gone now, Helen," she said, glumly. "It—it ran into a hole in the sand."

Helen kept scanning the sand with suspicious eyes, but the other girls slumped down onto the blanket. _Do something_, pleaded Avery, his eyes naked and beseeching without his glasses. Sally though a quick moment, and then she opened her mouth and began to sing, in her most raucous, overloud voice, "My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light…"

Claire and Avery and the twins saw what she was about, and joined in, shouting the next lines.

_And he married a mermaid one fine night!_

_Of this union there were three: _

_A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!_

By the time they reached the chorus they were fairly screaming, so that heads up and down the beach turned in their direction. But the biggest surprise of all was when another voice joined in. Irene sang _with_ them, in a beautiful, soaring soprano, no less.

_Yo ho ho! The wind blows free!_

_Oh, for a life on the rolling sea_.

And even more than that, Irene _began_ the next verse: "One night, as I was a-trimming the glim…" She raised a questioning eyebrow as their voices trailed off.

Said Claire, for all of them, "We don't feel like singing anymore."

Irene looked at them strangely. "You could have fooled me with the way you were shouting." She lifted one beautiful shoulder in a shrug. "Suit yourselves."

Sally would be ashamed to admit it later, but she gave up, then. She lay back against the sand, staring out at the water. It was so blue, but it would not do to simply say that it was blue as a sapphire, or a violet. Her writerly little mind sought for a new way of saying the old sentiment. Suppose she was to say that it was 'blue as the saddest day,' or even 'the very color of summer itself.'

Far out in the water the boys were swimming. Sally found Walter in the bunch, his reddish hair slicked seal-brown by the water. Was it true, what Gilly had said about Walt being sweet on Lucy Wright? If it was, what _was_ it about Lucy that made him sweet on her? Had Cam known? For all their differences, Sally had never known Walter to keep a secret from Cam, and Cam must not have known, because he had looked so astonished. Fancy the kind of woman who would _ever_ be able to fall in love with _him_! Oh, Sally pitied her already—poor trodden lady!

The twins had grown bored with their beach ball and let it come to rest with a soft whoosh on the sand. "Aunt Irene," sighed Amy, "Won't you _play_ with us?"

Irene was considering a drawing of a model in a ruffly evening gown. "Why don't you play with Amy?"

"I _am_ Amy."

Now, for the first time in ages, Irene seemed to take notice—real notice of them. "I thought you were Helen," she said, wrinkling her brow at the chubby red-haired girl in front of her—as un-Helenlike a person as there had ever been. "Are you sure you're not Helen?" she asked Amy, suspiciously.

"Pretty sure," said Amy.

"Well, if you're not Helen," said Irene, looking pleased with herself. "You can _play _with Helen." She went back to her magazine, pulling her hat low over her face.

Oh, she _couldn't_ be bothered, this imperturbable Irene! Sally stood up, and brushed the sand from her haunches as the boys came up from the water sopping wet, with blue lips from staying in so long. They might have stayed in until they were icicles for all Irene might have cared!

Amy wandered off, with Selwyn, toward the water's edge. But Sally would not be so easily dismissed. "I'm tired and hot," she pronounced, crossly. "I want to go home."

What she meant was that there was no use playing at this any longer. There was nothing they could do that would make Irene look up long enough from her magazine to see that she was not right for this family. Sally had never had more dismal time at the seashore. They had failed—the wedding would take place—and they would have to see Uncle Shirley shackled to Irene for life, knowing all the time that they had not been able to prevent it.

"I want to go home, too," sighed Avery. "I'm prickled all over with heat rash."

But perversely, Irene did not want to go. "I need to work on my suntan," she said firmly. "Or else I'll be white on white in my wedding dress. Who ever heard of a consumptive-looking bride?"

Claire Meredith grinned, an evil look breaking out over her small, flowerlike face. "I think we should stay," she said, sweetly. "I love a bride with freckles."

Irene put one hand up to her full cheek, her eyes wide with horror. And that was all it took.

The walk home seemed twice as long as the walk there. All of the children were in low spirits. Gilbert had a cut on his leg from where he had scraped it on a piece of driftwood. The heat rash had climbed up Avery's neck to his face, with a ghastly effect. Cam had been offended, because _he_ had not been ready to leave the beach, and he resented having to go. His eyes snapped and flashed and nobody dared speak to, or even look at him, in case they set him off. Helen was wide-eyed and anxious because she was afraid that he would, anyway.

But Irene was in surprisingly good spirits. She practically skipped down the street, stopping now and again to admire the way her slim, tanned legs looked in her espadrille sandals. She even hummed under her breath, and sang a little, in the same surprising sweet voice she had exhibited on the beach. _Her voice came angrily out of the night, the devil take the keeper of the Eddystone light_! She turned to flashed her lipsticked smile at the band of weary travelers in her wake. She had forgotten there was a thing as consumptive brides or freckles in the world.

"Here you are!" she cried, when they finally arrived at Ingleside. "All your brood, Rilla, present and accounted for!"

Aunt Rilla surveyed them with a perplexed smile that deepened into a frown as she realized—something—was amiss.

"_Where_ are the twins?" Rilla asked Irene.


	6. A Romantic Interlude

"I thought for sure Irene would catch it after that," said Sally dismally at that night's conference. All of the cousins were tired and downcast and sporting various shades of sunburn—and they were no closer to being able to think that the wedding between Shirley and Irene would not take place. "Leaving the twins behind at the beach! And she didn't even notice they were gone!"

"We're the ones who 'caught' it for wandering away," said Selwyn Ford, his face still streaked with tears. Uncle Shirley had gone back to the beach to retrieve the wayward travelers and found them exploring a rock cove, just at the point of high tide, which was, according to the law of clan Blythe, an unforgivable sin. Whether or not Rilla had had occasion to use her cold-pale tone with Irene was outside of the children's provenance; all Wynnie and Amy knew was that they had each been spanked, and sent to bed without supper, and—as crowning injury, they had been barred from the upcoming visit to Avonlea. The scolding and the spanking rankled, but worst than those by far was the fact that the other cousins would get to spend two days at Green Gables, while they would be left behind at quiet Ingleside. They were not really concerned with Irene at the moment, even if the others were.

Claire Meredith sighed. "Our plan _really_ isn't working. We were bad as can be at the beach today and Irene didn't notice. And _we_ were punished for something that wasn't even our fault."

"We!" cried Amy, from her place on the bed, where she was lying on her stomach in deference to her paddled behind.

"I think we should call a temporary suspension of our operations for the time being," Walt decided. "We've seen that nothing works, and all we're doing is making trouble for ourselves. If we try anything else, Mother might cancel the Avonlea visit entirely."

"And then you wouldn't be able to see _Lucy,_" teased Gilbert.

"None of us will be able to see _any_ of the Green Gables folks," said Walter as though his cousin had not spoken, but he became very pink about his cheeks and ears while he said it.

"I'm tired and the burn on my back hurts like the dickens," said Avery, getting up and going to his bed. He slipped under the covers and pulled them up over his head.

"I was hoping to see Denny Keith," said Selwyn hopelessly. "He was saving a baseball card for me. I suppose I'll never get it, now." He, too, slipped away from the circle and went to his bed.

One by one, the cousins got up, and tucked themselves in. Helen turned out the lights, and got into bed, herself. She wished the evening had ended on a happier note. She hated for any day with her cousins to be marked with unhappiness—they were all together so rarely that it seemed a shame to spoil any of their time by being disappointed. The general feeling of gloom in that chamber pressed down on her, and she pleated the edge of her blanket in her fingers, thinking that she must lighten it.

"Doesn't Irene have a beautiful singing voice, though?" She asked her question into the darkness, certain that her cousins were all awake and listening. No answer came for such a long time that she soon decided maybe they _weren't_. But then, Cam's voice cut through the shadows.

"Shut _up_, Helen," he growled.

* * *

Morale was higher in the morning—at least, for most of the contingent. It was Sunday, and they were all feeling comforted by the idea that church was looming. The Blythe, Ford, and Meredith boys and girls believed strongly in the power of prayer. If things were looking grim, why not ask God to help set them right again? They had no doubt that He would at least, provide some sort of comfort, and so they were in good spirits as they walked to church together. Every day is fresh with no mistakes in it, yet—a redhaired orphan had told herself, once, and now her grandchildren took it up as their battle cry.

They were on their own, today. The adults were going to the afternoon service, but the children must go earlier, because after lunch Uncle Shirley would be driving them down to Avonlea for their visit. A feeling of excitement began to pervade the group. The best thing about Avonlea was the sheer preponderance of young people in it. Uncle Davy and Aunt Millie Keith had long ago turned their children out of the nest, but their doors were always open to their grandchildren, who prowled the place copiously and continuously. Over at Lone Willow Farm were the Wright girls, including the aforementioned Lucy, beloved of Walt. And there were new playmates to be made this summer, for a year ago, just at about this time, Paul Irving, the famous poet friend of the family, had been married to a widow from Boston who had three kids of her own. They would be summering at Echo Lodge just when the cousins were in Avonlea, and had already phoned up to Green Gables to arrange an introductory picnic.

"Violet Vale," whispered Sally to herself, dancing down the road in the sailor dress and hat that were sacred to Sundays. "Idlewild. Lake of Shining Waters. The Haunted Wood!"

Only three faces in the group were very gloomy—Amy's and Selwyn's, because they would not be going to Avonlea—and Helen's which _had_ been happy as Sally's, but which had taken on a worried air the closer they got to town. They walked through the maple grove, and her eyebrows pulled together; up Rainbow Valley and past the Glen Pond, and her shoulders sagged; rounded the corner onto the main thoroughfare, and her mouth opened in a little 'o' of dismay. For there was Eddie Douglas, with his hair slicked back and his clean white shirt gleaming in the sun, waiting for Helen as he had been for the past four Sundays.

Eddie was the youngest son of Mary Vance Douglas, and he resembled his mother to an astonishing degree. His hair was so pale that from a distance, he appeared not to have any hair to speak of. His eyes were a slightly more vibrant green that Mary's, and they usually sparkled with unholy glee. But right now, they shone out at Helen, who was the perfect picture of despair in her pretty pink-print middy dress, with what could only be called true and complete romantic love.

Eddie Douglas had fallen in love with Helen Blythe rather abruptly one month ago. It always amazed him, when he thought about it, how quickly his heart had been lost. One moment he had been clowning with some other boys on a stack old lobster traps on the wharf, trying with them to see who could produce the most piercing whistle. Then all at once he had slipped on a piece of moldy rope that had been discarded along the edge of the pier. If Helen Blythe had not been walking by at the exact moment he fell, on her way to Carter Flagg's store on an errand for her mother, then, Eddie always told his rapt listeners, he surely would have fallen into the water and drowned, in front of his comrades' helpless eyes.

In truth, Eddie would not have drowned. The water that the pier jutted out into was shallow, and like most Glen children, he had learned to swim almost at birth. But in the moment of his falling, Eddie had been afraid of drowning, and Helen had, too, for she had reached out and grabbed him, pulling him away from the edge and from his potential death with a grip that was totally incongruous with her pale, delicate beauty. Eddie had reeled back, striking his head on the edge of lobster trap, which really came closer to doing him in than the fall from the pier would have. At the sickening crack of skull against wood, Helen had dropped to her knees, aghast, clutching his hand to her breast.

"Eddie! Oh, Eddie, don't die!" she uttered, and her warm, terrified tears dropped down onto Edward's fingers and revived him. He opened his eyes, dazed, and beheld a golden-haired, hazel-eyed angel of mercy.

Since then, Eddie had 'courting' Helen, her amused father put it, sending bouquets of ragweed and misspelled little letters of ardor to the Ingleside doorstep, and waiting patiently at the bend in the road just before the Presbyterian church every Sunday, with the same entreaty on his lips each time:

"May I walk you to church, Helen?"

"No!" cried Helen, mortified. It really had been a trying morning for her. She feared Cam was still angry at her, as he had been last night, and her heart was sorrowful over the twins' banishment from Green Gables. She really could _not_ find any gentleness in her spirit to bestow upon this ardent, pink-faced, sweaty-handed lover.

In truth, Helen did not like Eddie Douglas very much. He was the kind of boy who frightened her with his boyishness. He was always running, jumping, climbing, whistling, or turning cartwheels. Or _breaking_ something. Last week he had used a pocketknife to carve "I Love hellen blythe" into the back of his family's church pew, and its discovery, to Helen, had been the ultimate betrayal. Helen had a horror of ever being associated with any type of scandal, and in her mind, the defacement of church property was a scandal of the most outrageous proportions.

Before that, Helen had tolerated, if not encouraged, Eddie's attentions, dutifully pressing his letters inside of her Third Reader and dropping his poor, pathetic bouquets into jars of water, where they wilted for days before giving up the ghost. But after that, the Blythe family found that their Helen _could_ be hard-hearted. She tore up his notes and stuffed them into the stove; she flung his flowery offerings as far as she could into the bushes. She would not deign to look at him, or even _speak_ to him, except to tell him that his affection was entirely unwanted.

"Just ignore him," Sally said, putting her arm around her sister. "Pretend he isn't there."

Sally did not need to tell her. Helen was doing just that, walking with her chin set at an angle that would have convinced Irene that pridefulness ran collaterally in families, too. To her, Eddie was as a pane of glass. She looked right through him.

But Eddie was not so easily deterred. If Helen would not walk with him, he would walk with Helen. He trotted alongside her like a faithful dog. "I wrote a poem for you," he whispered to Helen. "Would you like to hear it?"

"I would not." Helen's voice was pure ice.

But Eddie continued as if she had not spoken.

"O, my love is like a white, white daisy,  
That is newly sprung in days that are hazy.  
O, my love is like the a song I hear,  
That I like to whistle far and near."

"You didn't write that," said Sally scornfully. "Most of that poem was written by Robert Burns."

"But not all of it," said Eddie cheerfully. "So I think me and Mr. Burns can share the credit. Say, Helen, won't you let me walk you home from Sunday school?"

By now Helen was weeping, though she was trying vainly still to keep her chin up. She had never been so embarrassed in her life. To have poetry recited to you—_stolen_ poetry—right on the road while the Flagg girls were watching and laughing! She choked a little, on her tears. Why was life such a trial? Why would Eddie _never_ leave her alone?

She turned her little tearful face to Eddie, and he was sent into throes of delight. He imagined that Helen's tears were for his poem, for the love she had just realized that she felt, too. He closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and leaned in to lay them on her cheek when—

_Thwap! _Cam reached out and cuffed him roughly on the ear. Eddie tumbled to the ground, his trousers muddy, his hopes dashed. All his fervent love had dissipated, because here was the fearsome Cameron Blythe standing over him, looking down at him with black, treacherous eyes.

"You leave my sister _alone_," he roared, at the very edge of one of his rages. "Or next time I knock you down you won't be _able_ to get back up again. She doesn't like you. She doesn't _want_ anymore of your lip. If you really 'loved' Helen you'd see that she's shy and that your stupid antics are embarrassing her. Get up—get up—and don't come around her again!"

Eddie got up, and skedaddled. He didn't look back.

"Oh, Cam," Helen wept. "You shouldn't knock people down on the road to _church_, of all the places. But—thank you, darling. I don't think Eddie will bother with me again."

"He'd better not, if he knows what's good for him," said Cam gruffly, his temper already receding. He still looked very fierce, but he took Helen's hand, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. And that is how Helen knew that he had forgiven her, for taking Irene's part, the night before, and once again, all was right in her little world.


	7. In Avonlea

Green Gables was always lovely, but this time of year, surrounded by the fruits of summer, it was at its very best. Sally's heart beat with barely suppressed excitement as they drove toward it, her mind teeming with pictures of dear Uncle Davy, with his lopsided grin and long white beard; of Aunt Millie, and the strawberry pie that would be waiting; of the little white east-gabled room where she would sleep, where Uncle Davy's own daughters had slept, and where Grandmother Blythe herself had dreamed, long ago. Some of those dreams remained—the whole of Green Gables was suffused with a glow of past hopes, and the possibility of wonderful things for the future.

Lovers Lane was a leafy arch, and as soon as they had passed through it, they marked the official beginning of their visit. Only a little way longer, now! When they pulled up in the Green Gables driveway, the Wright girls were waiting, waving wildly. Sally and Claire leapt from Uncle Shirley's car and ran to Rachel, covering her with kisses. They all giggled together as Walt disembarked, and shook Lucy's hand formally, the tips of his ears fiery red.

A great many things happened at once, then. It was always this way in Avonlea. Three or four of the Keith children ran out to greet the Glen delegation, all chattering away at once. Uncle Davy's Irish setters, Cain and Abel, joined the melee, barking passionately and leaping up to place their paws on the children's shoulders. Uncle Davy was not far behind them—he never was—and his voice rang out over them all, while sweet Aunt Millie hung back, knowing that their appetites would soon get the better of them. Doris Keith whispered in Sally's ear that the barn cat had a new 'batch' of kittens, and the cousins decided to go and see them right away. Uncle Shirley, standing by the station wagon, threw up his hands in mock dismay, and they ran back to hug and kiss him, to assure him that they would miss him. Sally found that all of her resentment of her uncle had dissipated the moment she had seen the green-gabled house peeking through the trees. She kissed her uncle and felt no qualms about it. _Could_ there be a thing such as an Irene English in this beautiful summertime world?

They visited the barn cat, stroked the velvety little paws of her kittens, and then, since they were there, took turns swinging on a rope suspended from the hayloft roof onto the sweet smelling straw below. Sally closed her eyes, and stretched out her arms, luxuriously. Was there any such bliss as this?

With their first flush of energy waning, the children lay in the hayloft and caught each other up on the happenings in their lives. Rachel Wright, aged ten, had sung a solo in church that day. She sang it for them, then:

_Can a little child like me  
Thank the Father fittingly? _

_Yes, oh yes! be good and true,  
Faithful, kind, in all you do._

They laughed. Rachel looked very angelic when she sang, but they all knew that she was a ragamuffin, through and through. She could not fool them.

Lucy had won a prize at the end of the spring term for mathematics. She tossed her head and darted her eyes at Walt to see if he appreciated this news. Denny Keith had gotten a parakeet for his birthday and was trying to teach it to talk; so far it said 'hello' and 'goodbye' and a very naughty word that nobody knew who had taught it, but Silas, Denny's brother, suspected it had been Grandpa Davy. Silas himself had kissed Ruthie Andrews on a dare the last day of school and had no qualms in telling them this rather proudly. Doris Keith, just Helen's age, had been eating a sticky candy and it had pulled a back tooth out by the roots—it hadn't even been loose! And how it had bled! The cousins shivered, just thinking of it.

Helen wanted to know what the Echo Lodge kids were like, but none of the Avonlea group had met them yet. But they had seen the new Mrs. Irving in Grafton day-before-yesterday. She stopped and spoke to them about her children, two sons and a daughter. She must be about fifty years old, but she was very, very pretty, yet. She had silver-gold hair and carried herself like a queen. Her name had been Elizabeth Grayson, and then Elizabeth Golden, and now, finally, was Elizabeth Irving.

"Elizabeth Grayson!" said Sally, the family historian, after all. "I wonder if Mrs. Golden—Mrs. _Irving_—is Grandmother's 'Little Elizabeth?'"

"I think she must be," said Rachel, "She said she was looking forward to meeting 'Anne's grandchildren.'"

"Oh, _how_ nice that Little Elizabeth married Paul," breathed Helen, who was so much acquainted with both figures through family lore that she always thought of them by their first names, though she would never dream of doing it to their faces. For a long moment, all the cousins sat silent, thinking of the story about poor, pale, stifled Little Elizabeth, vindicated in the end by her father's love. The children of Elizabeth Grayson—the stepchildren of Paul Irving, author of the 'Rock People' stories—whoever they were, they would be of the race that knows Joseph, there was no doubt of that.

"_Did_ Mrs. Irving say anything else about her children?" asked Avery, eagerly.

"Yes—she talked of them a little. Harry is the oldest of the Golden kids—he's fearsomely old, fourteen. Then there's Elizabeth, who's called Bess. She's eleven, like you, Sally and Claire. The youngest is a little boy named Arthur—they call him Artie, and he's only nine."

"That's not so young," said Helen, standing up for herself. She did not find it so difficult to do, when she was at Green Gables.

"Harry won't want to pal around with us," said Cam certainly. "He'll think we're babies. But the other two sound promising. 'Bess Golden' sounds like the name of a pretty girl, doesn't it? I bet she has long fair hair, and purply-violet eyes. That's just the look of girl I like best."

"I rather prefer dark hair," muttered Walt, darting a glance at Lucy, who pretended not to hear, and tossed her luxuriant jet-black curls over her shoulder.

"Well we'll find out for ourselves tomorrow," said Doris Keith. She fell back against the hay with an audible sigh of happiness, and picked up the thread of their previous conversation. "What's new with you all?" she wanted to know.

The cousins felt, for the first time, a shadow of gloom pass over their sunny, happy day. "Irene," sighed Claire, remembering.

"Who's Irene?" Silas asked.

"She's going to marry Uncle Shirley," Gilbert explained. "And she's _awful_."

"Awful! Uncle Shirley would never marry an 'awful' woman."

"Oh, but she is," Claire promised. "She's the vainest, most puffed up woman I know. She only cares about her looks—and if they're better than other peoples.' She's supercilious—"

"Haughty," put in Avery.

"Rude," put in Sally.

"And cold," finished Gilbert. "But a looker, for all that." He grinned a wicked grin, and Claire punched him lightly on the arm.

Lucy Wright didn't look convinced. "All those things can be reformed," she said, sounding a little Helenish. "A person can stop being cold, or rude, or haughty, with a little time."

"It's worse than that, though." Sally sat up and propped her chin on her hand. "Irene has no imagination. She—she has no _dreams_ in her."

It was the worst thing Sally could think to say about anybody, and the others immediately sobered at her words. They did not doubt, now, that it was very serious, indeed. Uncle Shirley—married to a woman who did not _dream_!

"Well," said Doris matter-of-factly. "What are you all going to do about it?"

"We've tried to put a stop to it," Sally said, a little defensively. "We've tried to be bad, thinking if we were bad enough she'd get annoyed, and wouldn't want to marry a man who was associated with such naughty kids. But Irene is _impervious_ to badness. She just doesn't notice it."

"Probably because she's bad herself," said Cam, with relish.

Rachel Wright looked at them scornfully. "You're doing it all wrong," she said. "You fellows are being all backward about this."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Rachel, sitting up, hay stuck into her dark hair. "That you kids are _good_ kids. If you're going to be naughty enough to drive somebody out of a marriage, you have to be really, _really_ bad. And I don't think you're capable of being that bad. All you're doing is making yourselves naughty for no reason at all—you _can't_ be as bad as you need to be for your plan to work. It isn't in you."

"I bet it's in me," said Cam.

"Not even in you," continued Rachel, who knew about Cam's rages, having seen some of them firsthand.

"So—what should we do instead?" asked Walt, slowly.

Rachel smiled. "You say you don't want Uncle Shirley to marry Irene, because she isn't the right woman for him. Well, you've got to _find_ the right woman, and put her in his path. What kind of a woman _should_ he marry? You need to think of that, first."

The cousins had never thought to consider what kind of woman they _wanted_ for Uncle Shirley. They had only stopped to think about what kind of woman they expected to get. They blinked at each other, a little dazedly.

"She'd be a dreamer," said Sally, to start them off. "Someone who—who could _see_ poetry, and hear it. Who _breathed_ it."

"She'd be sweet and good," said Claire. "And she wouldn't spend too much time thinking about her clothes, and her own looks."

"She'd_ care _about other people," said Walt.

"But she'd be fun, too," protested Avery. "She'd have to have a great laugh."

"And she'd be pretty," mused Gilbert, who always had a mind for such things.

"Well, then." Rachel smiled, and crossed her arms. "Do you know a woman like that?"

"We know heaps of women like that," said Walt. "But they're our aunts. Or they're already married."

"Well, you'll have to _find_ one who isn't." Lucy took up her sister's cause. "And you'll have to introduce her to Uncle Shirley. Then when you have, Fate—or Providence—will do the rest."

"There's our Aunt Persis," said Gil. "She's beautiful, laughy, and dreamy. We all love Aunt Persis."

"But Aunt Persis lives in New York," said Claire uncertainly. "She isn't coming to visit anytime soon. We'll have to find someone else and make her fall in love with Uncle Shirley fast—and him, her. And I _mean _fast. The wedding is in only a little over two weeks."

"Two weeks is enough time for two hearts to recognize each other," said Denny Keith. They all stared at him. Where had that burst of romanticism come from?

"I don't know," Denny whispered, startled, and they laughed, and threw handfuls of hay at him.

"You'll find someone," said Rachel certainly. "If you set your minds to it, you can make it happen. And we'll all help you think, and pray _hard_. Now, I don't want to be blue anymore. Let's go inside, and have some of Aunt Millie's pie. And then we'll jump on Uncle Davy's feather bed until our stomachs hurt."


	8. Echo Lodge

The next morning the girls—and Avery—helped Aunt Millie make a perfect confection of a cake for the Echo Lodge picnic that afternoon. With five pairs of little hands in the kitchen, it could have been a case of too many cooks, but Aunt Millie was quick-thinking enough to find something for everybody to do without all of them trying to do all things at once. Doris broke the eggs, Helen measured the dry ingredients, Avery stirred, Claire frosted, and Sally arranged sugar-violets on top. The result was a beautiful, pink-frosted, sparkling, perfect darling of a cake that pleased them all to no end.

"I hope we never have to live in a world without cake," sighed Sally, scooping a bit of the leftover icing with her finger.

"Why would we?" asked Claire, recklessly. "There will always be enough cake to go round. Won't the Echo Lodge kids be impressed by our hard work?"

"That they will," said a gracious Aunt Millie, who had managed to do the brunt of it, without anybody really noticing. She kissed each floury face. "Run upstairs, little ones, and get ready to go. I told Mr. and Mrs. Irving that you'd be there prompt at one."

They did as she bade them and then set off down the base line road to Middle Grafton, the cake in a beautiful silver box, tied with pink ribbon. It was a beautiful afternoon, light and airy and, well—golden. But the Green Gables faction were all a little too nervous to enjoy it properly.

"Suppose they're awful, the Goldens?" whispered Claire to the others.

"Suppose they think _we're_ awful," said poor Helen.

The base line road went through deep forest, and soon the dense growth of trees made it rather gloomy. Here and there, a shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy like a sword. These woods were cool, dark, mysterious. Sally shivered. She had visited Echo Lodge several times before, and it was such an otherworldly place that the journey seemed to take you

_Over the mountains of the moon  
Down the valley of the shadow. _

Going to Echo Lodge was a little like stepping into a fairy-land, unmarked by any map.

They had almost come to the turn in the road when they heard voices, voices that sent a shiver over all of them, almost as one unit. "Milord!" said a crystal-clear, high voice, imperiously. "Whither goest thou? How, now! Wilt thee not pay fealty to thy queen before thou goest?"

The children stopped as one, a little afraid to go any farther. They stared at each other with wide, amazed eyes.

"My humble apologies, my fairest lady," said a laughy voice. "I did not mean to give offense. I am only going down to Camelot, with Sir Lancelot, to serve our queen in regions abroad."

"Oh!" Sally breathed, and she broke into a run, toward the voices. She did not _really_ think, of course, that she would find a fairy princess and her faithful knight—but in these Middle Grafton woods, who knew?

What she found was the garden of the little stone house known as Echo Lodge. In the garden sat, not a queen but a very ordinary looking girl. At her feet knelt a handsome, exceptionally tall boy, with a smaller version lurking behind him.

_Just a bunch of children_, Sally thought, but then the girl on the stone bench whipped her head in Sally's direction, fiercely, her gaze cold and commanding. Then, seeing Sally there, the formidable queen smiled, showing a gap between her two front teeth.

"Harry, Artie," she said to the others in a soft, sweet voice. "Get up. Our new friends are here!"

Our new friends! When they hadn't even met! What a hopeful thing she must be. Sally knew she must be Bess Golden, and loved her with her whole heart in that moment.

Slowly, the group from Green Gables stepped into the garden to face the Golden children. They were all feeling a little shy, except for Bess, who stepped forward to face them. She was not at all the way Cam had imagined her to be. No gold-and-blue china milkmaid, this lassie! She had curly, abundant dark hair that took on new tones whenever she tilted her head and caught a new angle of light. Her eyes were the same shade: rich, deep, and sparkling with good humor. She had a rosy pale skin, small, tip-tilted nose, and full-lipped little mouth. In short, Bess Golden was just about the prettiest girl any of them had ever seen.

"Welcome to Echo Lodge," she said, in her soft, musical voice. "I'm Elizabeth, but I hope you'll call me Bess."

"We already think of you as Bess," Sally confided, and then wondered if it was considered bad manners to be so forward?

Bess only smiled. "Good," she said. "Mother has a different name for every day of the week, but I like to stick with the one. These are my brothers, Harry and Arthur."

The two boys stepped forward. They were very like their sister in appearance, except that Harry had serious eyes while his sister's were sparkling, and Arthur was covered—simply covered—in freckles.

"It was so nice and we were so excited that we decided to come out and wait for you," said Harry, affably. "We decided to play 'Camelot' while we were waiting."

Again, Cam was wrong! It seemed as though Harry Golden _was_ still able to play, even at the incredibly advanced age of fourteen.

"Bess was acting Guinevere," he explained, "And I was Arthur, and _our_ Artie was Lancelot."

"Oh, we can all join in!" cried Sally, shaking with happiness. "You can have a whole array of knights. I'll be your handmaiden, your majesty. And you can have a proper Morgan La Fay, a Merlin, a Lady of the Lake…"

Bess laughed, a silvery sound, and the echoes laughed with her. "Oh, yes, we'll play!" she laughed. "But first I want to know all your _real_ names, before I start thinking of you as Elaine and Enid and Morgana." They told them, and she repeated each name slowly and carefully, as though she were fixing it in her memory. "Cameron, Gilbert, Walter, Sally, Claire, Helen, Avery, Denny, Silas, Lucy, Rachel and Doris. Why—those are all _wonderful_ names!"

"Not Doris," said Doris Keith, glumly.

"Doris is the best name of them all," said Harry Golden, firmly. "Doris was the daughter of Oceanus, a true sea nymph, you know. She was the mother of the Nereids, who helped and guided sailors at sea."

"Really?" asked Doris, agog.

"Really," said Harry certainly.

"Shall we eat first, or shall we play?" wondered Bess. And Sally cried, "Oh, let's do both, at once!"

Bess shook her head gravely but gently. "I always have to _eat_ as myself," she explained. "I like eating so much that I can't be anybody else while I do it."

"Bess is our actress," Artie explained, wriggling with excitement like a pup. "She's jolly good at it, too! She'll be a famous movie star, one day."

An actress—familiar with Arthurian legend—and Greek legend—an actress _and_ a dreamer! Oh, they had hit the jackpot with the Goldens!

Bess led them to a canopy that had been hung from the branches of an old, hoary spruce. Underneath the canopy was a large blanket, with room for everyone to sit. Delectable things lay everywhere—sandwiches and cookies, lemonade, and some strange, pale pink cubes in little saucers. "It's Turkish delight," said Bess, offering the saucer to the boys and girls. "It's my favorite."

They were not sure, but Cam finally stepped forward. "Give me one," he demanded. "I'll try it." He ate one, and looked at Bess incredulously. "It tastes like—roses," he marveled.

"Like rosewater," Bess nodded. "It's my favorite because it always reminds me of summer."

They sat down on the blanket, and set to their feast. As they sampled each delicacy, the children tried to learn as much as they could about each other.

"Ingleside," said Bess, when Sally told her the name of the house where she lived. "Most of the time houses are called after things _around_ them. 'Oak Ridge.' 'Pincrest.' Even 'Echo Lodge.' But Ingleside sounds like a house where _home_ is the real attraction."

"Oh, it is," said Sally, not boastfully at all, thinking of how soon Bess could conceivably come to visit her there. "What is your house in Boston called?"

"1244 Charles Street," said Arthur, and they all laughed.

Artie's face grew cloudy when he spoke of his father. He had died, it appeared, when the Goldens were just small children. He had been in the Great War, and when he came home, he had never been the same. His lungs had not been strong since he had been gassed at St. Juvin.

"I remember him in his chair, with his tartan blanket thrown over his lap, and a smile on his face," Harry said, because it appeared that Bess was choking back tears and could not speak, herself. "Mother was desperate after his death. She didn't think she'd ever love again and for so long, I didn't want her to. But when we met Mr. Irving—he teaches at my school, you know—it was love again, at first sight. And I didn't mind. I was glad to see Mother happy."

Bess had composed her features but she didn't want to talk of such sad things anymore. "What are you all going to be when you grow up?" she wanted to know. "Don't say you don't know, or you're too young. You have an idea, at least, and I want to hear it. You already know that I'm destined for the stage. Harry is going to be a lawyer and Artie is going to be a magician."

"I'm going to be a writer," Sally said, warming to the idea of telling futures. She had known this about herself for a long time. But she was surprised to hear some of the others' answers. Gilbert wanted to go into business, like his father. Silas wanted to be a dairy farmer. Denny wanted to play baseball, like Babe Ruth.

"What about you, Cameron?" asked Bess. Sally liked the way Bess said 'Cameron,' with such a lingering emphasis on every syllable. She really did have a magical voice.

Cam shrugged. "I don't think I'll ever be anything," he said, with a queer sort of certainty.

"Everybody has to be useful in some way," said Harry, American to the core. "You don't mean you'll do _nothing_?"

Cam shook his head. "I just don't think I'll ever amount to anything," he said, his eyes growing large and black in a way his brother and sisters did not like to see. "Whenever I try to picture myself grownup and serious, I can't. So I think I'll do my best to stay a boy forever, if I can."

"What do you want to be, Doris?" asked Sally quickly, in case Cam was thinking of raging. She did _not_ want him to rage in front of the Goldens.

Doris said she wanted to be 'just a mother, I guess.'

"Don't say _just_ a mother," said Bess a little reprovingly. "Mothers are some of the most important people in the world. Only _some_ people want doctors and lawyers and ministers, but everybody _needs_ a mother. Oh, I _love_ my mother. You'll love her, too, when you meet her."

As though she had summoned her with her words, Mrs. Irving came out of Echo Lodge just then, and made her graceful way to the garden. She was a tall, slim woman dressed in a pale, dove-gray dress. On anybody else it would have looked austere, but Mrs. Irving had enough joy-lines on her face to keep herself from looking dour.

"Hello, boys and girls," she said seriously—they had no cause to think Mrs. Irving might be poking fun at them, as so many unsympathetic grownups were wont to do. Her eyes lit on Sally and she laughed out loud. "When I was eleven I always wondered what my beautiful Miss Shirley would have looked like at my age—now I know. It is a pleasure to meet you, Sally, is it? And all the rest of you. I hope I'm not intruding but Paul bade me come out and ask if you would like to hear the first few chapters of his latest 'Rock People' books. He has only just finished working on it a few minutes ago."

The children agreed enthusiastically—they all loved to hear about Nora, and the Golden Lady, and the Twin Sailors, and their adventures at the Striped Rocks. Mr. Irving came out, and read to them, with Bess doing the voices of Nora and the Golden Lady. Her Nora was spirited and sharp, her Golden Lady was placid and mellifluous. She explained, when the chapter was done,

"One day the _Rock People_ stories are going to be made into a film, and I'm going to _play_ the Golden Lady. I would play Nora but I expect I'll have to be a grownup before mother lets me go to Hollywood, and Nora is young."

Too soon it was late afternoon, and the children had to walk back to Avonlea. They thanked Mr. and Mrs. Irving and the Goldens, all the Blythes, Merediths and Fords sad, for the first time, at the thought of going home and leaving their new friends behind. But the Goldens would be at Echo Lodge all summer, and already they had promised to write as often as they could. They waved for as long as they could see each other, and then, right before they went around the bend, they heard the sound of the old tin horn hanging over the Echo Lodge mantel, even after all these years. The 'distant horns of elfland' rang over the purple hills, fainter and fainter with each breath.

Bess was bidding them goodbye—goodbye for now.


	9. The Perfect Woman

"You're getting so big, Sally," said Faith Blythe to her daughter, the afternoon of her return from Avonlea. "I swear you've gotten taller just in two days." She let her hand pass over her girl's hair. The sun had picked out reddish glints in it, and she was so tall and tanned that Faith felt a little wave of pride and bittersweet sadness commingled wash over her. Sally was growing into a pretty, healthy, spirited girl—but she would not be Faith's baby much longer, maybe wasn't even now. And yet: she always would be, in some queer way, the dimpled, roly-poly little infant that Jem had placed in her arms on that December morning eleven years ago. A frosty Sunday—the choir at church, Faith heard later, had been singing 'Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming' at very nearly the exact moment that tiny Cecilia Blythe had been first blinking her brand new eyes at the world. Oh, oh, where was that baby—with Jem's chin and eyes—where was she, now?

To cover the fact that she was suddenly close to foolish, motherly tears, Faith spoke sternly. "Run over to the manse," she ordered her daughter, "And ask Una if I might borrow her pattern-book. I think I can make you up a couple of new dresses tomorrow—I won't have time next week, with all the wedding fuss. Tell Una that she has to come up tomorrow and help me plan—Irene has sent me her menu—and how we're supposed to come up with half of what she wants I don't know. But Una will."

Sally was glad to go on the errand for her mother. She loved the cousins, of course, but it was nice, from time to time, to get a moment to herself, a quiet little time in which to think things over. And Sally had much to think about. Striking Bess Golden was not far from her mind—her lovely voice—her queenly air. Her brothers, too, had taken up permanent residence in Sally's heart, and she recalled fondly, as she made her way through Rainbow Valley and up the manse hill, Artie's freckled face crinkled in laughter, Harry's firm, serious mouth, and kind eyes. He had been so tender to Doris—she liked him—oh, she liked him very much for that!

And there was, too, what Rachel Wright had told them, about trying to find the perfect woman for Uncle Shirley. She had been too busy with fun things to think of it in Avonlea, but now, energy surged to her fingertips, even as a heavy despair weighted her heart. Could it be done? _Was _there a woman out there that fit all the criteria? Sweet, smart, kind, funny, _pretty_… there _was_ Miss Williams, Sally's teacher at the Glen school. She was Sally's favorite and had long, fair hair that she wore in a pony-tail. But didn't she have a beau teaching at a boy's school in Summerside?

The question was turning itself over and over in Sally's mind as she ran up the manse drive. Rosemary Meredith was sitting on the front porch, with the Rev. Meredith at her side, and Sally kissed them both, a little absently. "I've come to see Aunt Una to borrow her pattern book for Mother," she told them, but in her mind she was thinking, _who? Who?_

"Una is visiting with Mary Douglas, but she should be home in a little while," said Rosemary. "You can sit with us, Sally, and wait for her, if you'd like. We've missed you, you know. How was your visit to Avonlea?"

"Oh, _Grandma_," said Sally, astar with happiness. "It was simply wonderful. We made friends with a group of children and I just know that they're the kind of friends who will _count_. I already find myself carving out little places in myself where I can carry them with me, all the time. That sounds a little silly," said Sally, self-consciously, "Doesn't it? When I've only known them just one day."

"Some people can know each other a lifetime, and never be _real_ friends," said John Meredith, seriously, to his little granddaughter. "And some people have been friends since the beginning of time—and will be, until the end of it. Una is like that. Mary Vance—funny, I can't help but think of her as that, still—had a bad fall this morning, and Una has been with her all day, tending her. She is as faithful a woman as I have ever known—as faithful a _person_."

"She lives her whole life in service to others." The years had never diminished the love and respect that Rosemary Meredith felt toward her stepdaughter—it had only deepened, with time. "I used to pray God would give Una a home, someone to love, and children—now I see that He has, in a way. Everywhere she goes, she is welcome, and everybody who meets her loves her. And you children have been like her own."

"Dear, darling Aunt Una," murmured Sally, fondly, thinking of her aunt's small white hands, her charming, gap-toothed smile, her deep blue eyes, which overflowed with tenderness, sympathy, or laughter, whichever was appropriate. Aunt Una was, in Sally's mind, positively geriatric—nearly _forty_—but she still was very beautiful, Sally thought. Her black hair betrayed no silver thread. Her skin was moon pale, and her figure was perfect in proportion and suppleness. For as long as Sally could remember, Una had always worn something red every day, in honor of the poppies that marked the graves of the dead in France. A little red flower at her throat, vermillion piping on her shirtwaist, a twist of crimson ribbon pinned to her lapel. The color highlighted the richness of her dark hair, contrasted beautifully with her pale skin, and hinted at bold, mysterious depths beneath that placid surface.

Having an Aunt Una was like having another mother, Sally thought, leaning her chin on the back of her brown hand, ruminatively. She was always ready to listen, to bandage, to soothe, to laugh. What a pity she had never married, never had children of her own! She would have made some man an excellent wife, some lucky, black-browed children a wonderful mother. She was the best cook in the family—so neat and orderly. She was sweet and understanding, and smart, and funny, when she wanted to be…

The hair on the back of Sally's neck stood suddenly up. She sat up perfectly straight, electrified with an idea. Mother had said once, "There's nobody on earth good enough for Una." Sally had heard her. "And then Mother had said, "_Except_ maybe Shirley, but he's not the marrying kind."

Well! Mother had been wrong, hadn't she? Uncle Shirley _was_ the marrying kind, and Aunt Una was the best woman in the whole world! What's more, Sally already loved Aunt Una—loved her passionately—everybody did. And Uncle Shirley and Aunt Una were such _friends_. But Aunt Una was so _shy. _It could be—Sally began to tremble—that Aunt Una had loved Uncle Shirley for many years, but had only been too afraid to say so.

She jolted to her feet. Her grandparents watched her with furrowed brows. "Are you sick, Sally?" for Sally looked wide-eyed, and was panting, a little, in her excitement.

"I'm fine, Grandma!" Sally gave her a hasty kiss as she rocketed down the porch stairs. "But I have to go home. I just remembered something, something very important, that I have to—tell someone!"

"What about your pattern book?" called Rosemary, but Sally was already running through the gate, her bright hair streaming out behind her, like a banner of war, and did not hear.

* * *

"Aunt Una," breathed Claire, her eyes wide and rapt. "Why didn't _I _think of that? It really is the perfect solution. You're a genius, Sal."

"I know," Sally said, without any arrogance. "But don't thank me. Thank _God_. I swear, Claire, when I thought of it I felt as if _He_ had touched me—turned my head—shown me just what was in front of me all along. Uncle Shirley and Aunt Una. It's perfect."

"It's perfecter than perfect," said Walt, his eyes shining.

"But if it's so perfect," Helen pointed out. "_Why_ didn't it happen before? Uncle Shirley and Aunt Una have known each other all their lives. If they were going to fall in love, wouldn't they have done it by now?"

They all glared at her. "Spoilsport," Cam muttered, under his breath. But they all blinked at each other a moment. Wasn't it true, what Helen had said?

"Maybe," ventured Avery, "It was like in the pictures. They didn't see what was right in front of their eyes."

"I think I know why it didn't happen," said Gil, slowly. "I heard—well, I heard Mother say something once, when I was a little boy, and I've always remembered it. I think Aunt Una _had_ a lover once—and lost him. Mother was talking about how Aunt Una always sends every year to a charity in France, for the upkeep of the soldier's graves, there. 'She's always done it,' Mother told Dad, 'Since she lost—'

"And then Mother stopped. It was as if she'd realized she was about to betray a secret. I think she was about to say a _man's_ name. I think Aunt Una must have been in love, before—and he died, in the war."

Helen's eyes were filled with tears. "Poor Aunt Una," she said, compassionately. "Oh, she_ must_ love him still. We mustn't try and mess with her love for him—whoever she is."

"Darn it, Helen!" cried Walt, a little frustrated. "You always take such a narrow view of things. The war ended nearly fifteen years ago. Surely Aunt Una can't be hanging onto old love affairs from way back then."

Years and years later, when he bore the wounds from his own war, Walter Blythe would think back on this moment. He would think of people he had loved, and lost, and how he missed them ten, twenty, thirty years after their deaths, with a fresh pain, that never scarred over. He would remember the words he spoke this day, in the garret chamber, and he would be ashamed of his flippancy, and maybe even think that life had taught him a cruel lesson for it. But just then he was only twelve and he spoke with all the certainty of one who knows very little of life, and next to nothing of suffering. "She _must_ be ready to move on from it, by now. Don't you want Aunt Una to be _happy_, Helen? Don't you think she deserves to be happy?"

"I do," Helen wept. "Oh, Walt, I _do_. But I won't have you drag dear Aunt Una into this mess! Do whatever you want to Aunt Irene—I won't tell—but leave Aunt Una out of it!"

"You won't tell about this, either," said Cam, in a low, caressingly dark voice. "Or so help me, Helen, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!"

Helen said nothing else. She did not dare to speak to Cam when he got to be this way. She only stood, and turned her back, and walked out of the garret chamber. They heard her footfalls on the steps down to the second storey, and her soft sobs.

Cam shook his head and turned back to the cousins. "Helen has no gumption," he said, thinking what they were all thinking, uneasily. "Don't pay any attention to her."

His words had an authority in them, and if any of the cousins had been thinking second thoughts about their plan, they yielded them to the ether. Claire brightened. "What if they had a little baby?" she cooed. "A darling itty wee thing—a little girl, to dress in bonnets and frills?"

"Or a little boy, to teach to fish, and swim," said Walt, stretching out on the rag rug. "Sally, what are you doing?"

"Looking for my nice blue stationary," Sally said certainly. "If we're going to do this, we've got to do it. We have no time to waste."


	10. A Second Attempt

With only seven days until the wedding plans were taking definite shape around Ingleside, but Sally was in high spirits the next morning, as she pulled on her canvas Keds, sitting at the table in the kitchen. She could not help singing a little of a song she had heard at the pictures last year, a love song written by Messrs Gershwin. And after last night's plans, she was full of renewed hope, and her heart felt full and steeped in love as her faulty soprano shaped the words.

_Someday, there must come somebody__  
__Bringing heaven in view__  
__And so her courage, she must keep__  
__As she sings herself to sleep…_

Aunt Di, who was clearing away the breakfast things, surprised her by taking up the second verse in a clear, bright, silvery voice.

_Somebody from somewhere__  
__Will appear someday__  
__I don't know just from where__  
__But he's on his way…_

The two female creatures seemed to realize just then that they were not alone, and met each others' eyes suspiciously. "Why are _you_ so happy?" Sally wondered of her pretty, flame-haired aunt, who looked as though she had been painted over with contentment. She had never seen Aunt Di look so rosy, so shiny.

"No reason," said Di quickly, arranging her features in a hasty frown. But she could not quite manage it. Her lips still wanted to tuck up at the ends as she asked Sally, "Why are _you_ so happy?"

"Because God's in His heaven, and all's right with the world," said Sally, loftily, thinking of the blue envelope upstairs that was being closely guarded by the cousins until the time came for its delivery. In the Ingleside driveway, an automobile horn sounded, and Sally sprang from her chair and ran out into the blue, blue morning. Uncle Shirley was taking her flying today—for the first time in weeks!

Sally was never nervous about flying. Her first time in an aeroplane had been when she was too young to really remember it, and so she had never known a time when she was not acquainted with the way that Ingleside looked from above, the sight of the neat patchwork fields, the feeling of the wind in her hair and the misty fog on her face. All the same, as they drove toward the airfield, her palms began to sweat with apprehension. Sally was a woman with a mission, and she must not let the cousins down by bungling things, now.

Uncle Shirley glanced over at his niece and saw her little brow furrowed in concentration. "What are you thinking about, little Sally?"

Sally was grateful to him for giving her an opening. "I'm think of Aunt Una," she said, in a tone that she hoped was appropriately dolorous.

"About Una? What about her, Sal? Is she well?"

"In body, yes, I suppose…" Sally let her words linger, suggesting that in spirit, Una was from from well.

Uncle Shirley frowned, and looked at the road again. "If something's wrong with Una, you'd better tell me. If there was anything I could do for her, I'd do it, you know."

Sally pressed her lips together to hide a smile. "I think poor Aunt Una is in the depths of despair," she said, in a brokenhearted voice. It did not take much to manage it. Just the thought of darling Aunt Una _really_ in despair made her heart squeeze with pain.

"Despair!" Uncle Shirley pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, and faced Sally. "Una, in despair? Over what?" 

Sally writhed in her seat. She had painted things a little more strongly than she had meant to. "I didn't mean despair, exactly," she said, quickly. "Just—a little down in the dumps. I think she's blue—over—over Mrs. Douglas falling and hurting herself—and—and other things. I wish there was something we could do to cheer her up."

"I do, too," said Shirley, his eyes cloudy. "I don't like to think of Una upset. She's the sweetest creature imaginable—she does so much for the rest of us, we should at least make sure she's happy."

"Maybe," said Sally, helpfully. "You could take her up in the plane with you tomorrow. A nice sunrise flight would be just the thing to set her spirits—well, _soaring_."

Shirley laughed at her pun. "Una's none too fond of flying, you know that, Sal. But I suppose I could stop by the manse and take her on a walk—fresh air is the thing for glum spirits. I'll stop over later today, and see what's up."

"You should wear your blue shirt," Sally suggested in an offhand voice. "I heard Aunt Una say you looked _so_ handsome in it."

Shirley started the car again, pulled back on the road, and laughed delightedly. "Did she, now? Irene's fond of that blue shirt, too. But I think Una will have to take me in my bomber jacket and dungarees. It shouldn't matter—she's as unsuperficial a woman as I've ever met."

"And _such_ a good cook!" exclaimed Sally, who knew that Irene was not. "Maybe," she added, sweetly, "She could give Auntie Irene a few lessons."

Shirley laughed again. "I wouldn't want to be the one to suggest that to her, but maybe."

"I'm sure Aunt Una would be glad to teach her. She has her diploma in Household Science, you know."

Now Shirley looked at his niece strangely. "I do know," he said. "Una and I were at Redmond together, Sal. Yes—Una's a homey little thing. Perhaps she _could_ give Irene a few pointers."

Sally did not like all this talk about Irene, and wanted to turn the conversation away from her. "Aunt Una is so beautiful," she sighed, looking out the window. "Why, she's the prettiest woman in the world, isn't she?"

"Yes—if you like those soft, pale looks," Shirley mused.

"_I _do like them," Sally said firmly. "I like those kind of looks better than the lipsticked, made-up kind. Uncle Shirley," Sally could not resist bringing up Irene one last time, at least in a roundabout way, and made her voice very sweet as she asked the next question. "Do _all_ woman with blonde hair use peroxide, to make it look that way?"

"I don't know about all," Uncle Shirley chuckled. "Perhaps a few."

"Well, all the peroxide, and cosmetics, and fine feathers in the world can't make up for someone who isn't pretty on the inside," Sally expounded. "Aunt Una doesn't need one single little thing to make her lovely—she already _is_. Don't you think, Uncle Shirley, that she is darling?"

Shirley looked at the girl closely, a strange look in his eyes. But the child's face was guileless, her eyes wide and innocent.

"I think Una's the bee's knees, Sal," he said carefully. "She's my pal and always will be. Now—we're here, and Josey's waiting for us. Would you like to go up today—or would you rather sit here and list for me more of Una Meredith's dearest qualities?"

"Oh, I'd like to go up," cried Sally, throwing his arms around her uncle's neck. She hid her grin in his shoulder. Aunt Una did have many more dear qualities that Sally hadn't touched on yet—but there was always time for that on the drive home.

* * *

Una Meredith stood at the manse gate and watched Shirley go with a queer look on her face. She always enjoyed spending time with her brother-in-law—he was one of the only people she knew whom she could sit with, silently, with no awkwardness. But Shirley had not been silent today. All those questions he had asked, with such a worried frown on his face! "Are you feeling quiet well, Una?—are you sure?—is there anything you'd like to get off your chest?"

Una had assured him there was nothing, but Shirley had only patted her hand. "When you want to talk, I'm here," he said, as he kissed her cheek at the gate.

"Shirley," Una wondered, a little exasperated, "What on earth has gotten into you? Am I sick, like the heroine of a novel—perishing by consumption, with everyone conspiring to keep it from me?"

He smiled, his familiar grin. "A little bird told me you were blue," Shirley told her. "Una—those kids of ours are crazy for you, and don't ever forget it."

"I know that they are," Una replied, wondering what one thing had to do with the other. Well, she had heard of men acting strangely before their weddings, and Shirley would be married in a week's time. Perhaps it was nerves making him behave so strangely, looking at her so closely, so worriedly!

"I think you should go home and get some rest, Shirley," she told him firmly. And then stood at the gate, perplexedly, to watch him go. Una sighed, and opened the mailbox to retrieve the day's mail. A book for father—a magazine for Rosemary—and a pale blue envelope, addressed to Una herself. Una leaned against the fence and looked at it. There was no stamp—it must have been hand-delivered. She opened the letter, unfolded the page, and began to read.

_My dear Una,_

_This morning, when I was soaring about in the clouds, I could bearly keep my mind on the controls. The only thing I could think was that the turkoise sky was the same color as your eyes, your beautiful blue eyes, my darling._

_Fairest one, my heart will not let me keep silent any longer. I must speak! I have loved you for such a long time that loving you is part of me, now. I know that I am betrothed to another, but my conshence will not let me keep silent any longer! I love you, Una Meredith—I have loved you for all my life! _

_Do not speak of it, when you see me next. I will not have my heart broken if you do not feel the same. Only find some way to show me with a little smile, or nod, or familiar gesture, that you feel the same. Find a way to show me, Una, and I will tell Irene the wedding is off. I will give my heart to you, sweet dearest darling, if you only want it. _

_You are the sweetest, prettiest, wonderfullest woman in the world, and I adore you. _

_YOUR OWN_

_Shirley Blythe._

Una was so troubled that she did not notice the letter was not printed in Shirley's characteristic blocky scrawl. She _did_, however, notice that he had misspelled 'conscience.' And 'turquoise.' And '_barely_!'

She did not, for a second, believe Shirley had lost his heart to her. They had always been too good of chums for anything like that. But she was worried, a little, that he was losing his _sanity_. Una fingered the red rose tucked into the waistband of her dress and sighed. She folder the letter and put it carefully in her pocket, and went in to start on supper.


	11. Sweet Aunt Una

After supper that night, the family congregated on the verandah to hear the next chapter of Sally's epic. It had been a long, full day for most of them. The elder Dr. Blythe had spent the morning researching for a paper he was writing for a prestigious medical journal in Boston, and was snoozing openly in his deck chair. His son had been up since the night previous, attending to Mrs. Robson Flagg's croupy baby. He lay with his silvery-red head on his wife's lap; Faith stroked his hair and smiled down at him. Carl Meredith sat with an arm around Di, and the other around her mother, and they leaned tiredly against him. That morning the Chinese lanterns Irene had ordered from New York for the wedding had arrived, and they had needed to be hung up, and the task had taken the better part of the afternoon and evening. But the effect was worth it. The lanterns shone rosily from the verandah rail, casting circles of light on the faces below, tossing witchy shadows this way and that. Sally loved those jaunty lanterns—at least, she did, until she remembered _why _they were there. Then she hardened her heart against them.

The only person who looked fresh and cool and rested was Irene, in her pretty polka-dotted dress, which was as crisp at the end of the day as it must have been when she put it on in the morning. It was something Sally herself could never manage, and she wondered how Irene could. If Irene had been a different sort of person, Sally might have asked her. Sally looked down at her own checked dress, and found it sullied with drips from the ice cream cone Uncle Shirley had bought for her after their flight. She looked up and caught Irene looking, too, her painted lips moving in a smug smile. Somehow Irene always seemed to notice your loose ends, your untied shoelaces and flyaway hair. Sally hardened her heart against her, too. She looked past Irene at Uncle Shirley as she stood up on the verandah steps and shuffled her pages in her hand. Ostensibly, the epic was being written _for_ Irene, but this particular chapter was meant for Uncle Shirley, and Uncle Shirley alone. She did not want him to miss a word of it, and cleared her throat until she was sure she had his attention.

"For the next part of my epic," Sally announced to the group, "I wanted to write about several _important_ members of our family in detail. This chapter is going to be about my very dear Aunt Una, who is the best and brightest of us all."

Everybody exchanged smiles. They loved Una as much as her nieces and nephews—everybody did—except perhaps Irene, who gave a bored little huff, and stretched out her long, tanned arms, to admire their color and shape. _Just you wait,_ Sally thought, and she began to read in a loud, clear voice.

_Una Meredith was born in the springtime, and Mother says it is an appropriate time, for the springtime is sweet, and so is Aunt Una, who has had a reputation for kindness and gentlness all her life. Whenever there was anybody who was in a bad scrape, Una was there for them. It was Una who first befriended Mary Douglas when Mary was a little orphan that the Meredith children found homeless in the manse hayloft. Mary was pretty naughty and and has gotten her own reputation for prickliness through the years, but Una loved her, even when nobody else did. _

Assorted smiles from the peanut gallery, as they remembered that rowdy little orphan whose advent had heralded uproar in their quiet little lives. Sally thought that they were smiling for her, and could not help preening a little, before continuing.

_It was Una who went to Miss Cornelia Elliott and asked her to adopt Mary. And it was Una who went to Grandma Rosemary, and asked her to marry Grandpa, when she saw Grandpa loved her and needed a wife. Aunt Una has always looked out for others even before her own self. She is the sweetest woman that ever lived, and the nicest, and the best cook—_"No offense, Mother," said Sally, in an aside.

"None taken," laughed Faith. "I know my own limits. Rosemary might have married Father with enough time to help Una, but I was a lost cause, by then. Susan Baker used to weep when she watched me set my bread. Go on, Sally. We want to hear the rest."

_I've been reading the Bible for inspiration and I came across a verse in Psalms that sums Aunt Una up to a T, and I think the words of King David can apply to her about as well as anybody else who ever walked the earth: "You have made her a little lower than the angels"—but only a little bit lower, in my mind. _

Everyone was biting their lips a little at that, but only Irene laughed out loud. It was not a ncie laugh, Sally reflected—it was _almost _snide. "Oh, _honestly_," breathed Irene, and Sally, looking up, thought she saw a shadow of annoyance pass over Uncle Shirley's face. He put his arm around the shoulders of his bride-to-be, but it seemed to be a warning gesture, rather than an affectionate one. Sally was surprised to feel a little sorry for Irene, over that, and could not understand why. She tried to harden her heart, again, but couldn't, and to cover her fluster over the fact, she found her place and began to read, again.

_Aunt Una is a friend to all. Just to show everybody how much so, I wanted to write about two things that she has done that have been evidence of that. The first thing is this: when I was just a little girl, I had my first loose tooth, and I was scared. It didn't seem right to me that your teeth should just decide how to fall out of your head, one day. I thought that if I wasn't careful they would all fall out, and I wasn't too sure that they would grow back, either. I worried and worried about that tooth for days and days. Finally, it got so loose, and I got so worried, that I would not eat lest it fall out. Mother wanted to have it pulled but I would not let her. I ran from her, but I wouldn't scream, unless that made it fall out—it was really very loose. Walt wanted to tie a string to my tooth and tie the other end to the doorknob and then slam it shut. But I would not let them. I ran right out the door of Ingleside with my mouth clamped shut, all the way to the manse. _

_And then I managed to tell the whole story to Aunt Una, and she was the only one who sympathized with me. She made me a nice soft-boiled eggs and ice cream sodas that I could eat without chewing, and it was only because of her that I guess I didn't starve. When I was eating the egg my tooth just fell out on its own, without me noticing until Aunt Una pointed it out. She kissed me, and me a shiny fifty-cent piece, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought and I was never afraid again. If I had known about the fifty-cent piece all along, I might even have let Walt tie my tooth to the door, but Aunt Una could not know that, and she did the best she could, which was to be kind and understanding to me. _

_The second thing that is indicative of Aunt Una's kindness is something that happened before I was born. Uncle Shirley had graduated from Redmond College with a degree in mathematics but he wanted to start up his own flying business, rather than be a mathematician. Only he did not have the money for it. He got a loan from the bank, and some from his father, but he still did not have enough. At Redmond, Aunt Una had won a scholarship prize for being the top student in the Household Science program. She gave Uncle Shirley her prize money and did not even want him to pay it back, though he did, once he was a success. Still, Una could not be sure he would when she made the loan. She did it out of the goodness of her heart, because she loved Uncle Shirley very, very, VERY much. _

At this last 'very,' Sally looked significantly at Uncle Shirley, who was smiling. She took it as a good sign. Irene rolled her eyes, and Sally was so happy at her uncle's smile that she did not stick her tongue out at her like she would have, otherwise.

_In conclusion, I just ask you to wrack your minds and think about all the ways in which Aunt Una has helped YOU out at one time or another. _Sally paused, to let her audience do just that, before she went on. _The cousins and I have decided that the thing we wish most in the world is that Aunt Una should find a man who really appreciates how wonderful she is. We have even thought of the man that we would like for her: somebody who tells marvelous jokes, has a sense of adventure, and a kind heart. And who can whistle _Alexander's Ragtime Band _with all the swoops and dips in the proper places. And who also has brown hair and eyes_. _The End. _

They clapped for the little authoress. "That was marvelous, Sal," said her mother, in a voice that betrayed none of the relief that she was feeling over Una's absence. Such laudatory praise would have brought a fiery blush to her sister's cheeks and a secret embarrassment to her soul. Una _was_ sweet, but she was so shy that she could never stand to hear herself praised in such a direct way.

"I'd forgotten Una helped you out with your business, Shirley," yawned his father, who had woken up at the sound of the applause. "She is a fine, loyal thing, our Una, and what Sally says is true: she always has been."

"I'll never forget," remembered Di, "When I was first offered the job at the school in Red Lake, and I had only a week to get prepared. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, until Una came right over, parked herself in the corner of my room, and sewed like the wind for six days straight. I still have some of the dresses she made up for me, and they are just as sound and pretty as they were the day she made them. And Una sends me a box for my 'kids' every year—I'll certainly miss—" Di stopped herself short, and simply shrugged, as if to say she couldn't say enough about Una's wonderfulness, and it would be futile to even try.

"_I'll_ never forget," laughed Jem, "What a brick Una was when Helen was born. We'd had a nice nor'easter, two and a half feet of snow in six hours, and I was trapped at Four Winds Point all night. Una had slogged down the manse hill in all of it to be with Faith when the baby came. How she didn't get lost, or freeze to death, I'll never know, but when I saw her standing at the door with the little bundle in her arms, when I finally made my way back, my eyes nearly popped out of my head! The lines were down, and no calls were going through, so _how _Una knew she was needed I'll never know—she just managed to discern it, somehow."

"Una always has a way of being there when you need her," said Shirley softly, much to Sally's delight. "She is the most dependable person I've ever known. I used to mark time, during the war, by her letters, which always seemed to say exactly what I wanted or needed them to say."

Irene's lower lip was sticking out, as it always did whenever people were praising someone else. "Oh, Una is all things to all people, I suppose," she sighed, with an aggrieved air. "But _I_ can never get over how cold and haughty she was to me when we were in the Junior Reds together during the war. I'm just sensitive that way—I can never _bear_ any slight." When everyone turned to look dubiously at her, Irene added hastily, "But I suppose Una's grown up a lot since then. And I forgave her _ages _ago."

Once again, Sally felt a roil of uneasiness shudder over her. Irene's comment should have rankled in her soul. Now, she only felt _sorry_ for her. Poor Irene—think of how she would feel when Uncle Shirley should tell her that Una was the one who had won his heart in the end! Sally pictured Irene's face, and how it would look in that moment, her lips turned down and her mascara running in rivulets over her cheeks. Her tender little heart quailed. She did not want Irene to feel _too_ badly.

"It was the strangest thing," Sally confided to the cousins in the garret an hour later. "I never stopped to think that Irene might feel badly over it, if we succeed."

"When we succeed," amended Claire Meredith, succinctly. "Don't you want Uncle Shirley and Aunt Una to be married? Aunt Una will love him in the right way. Remember, Sally—Irene doesn't love Uncle Shirley like she ought to. She can't. It isn't _in_ her, to love like that."

Sally wasn't so sure anymore. And even if that _was _true:"Irene will be embarrassed, to be jilted, though, won't she?"

Walt put a hand on her arm. "She might—but we're doing the right thing. Aren't we?" He looked out over the faces of his comrades, suddenly doubtful.

"We _are_," said Claire fiercely. "We're doing absolutely the right thing. Go to sleep, Sally, and try not to think of it anymore tonight. You'll feel better in the morning."

Sally went to bed as she was bidden. But as she lay there in the dark, she could not help but see Irene's blue eyes, filled with sadness, and streaming tears. She tossed, and turned all night, but still, she could not get away from them. Those eyes _haunted_ her.


	12. Friends Far and Near

Helen went down to Rainbow Valley the next morning and spent a happy half-hour in her garden, tending her buds. It was that first, perfect, full hour of daylight, in which all the colors seem at their softest, and most delicate. It had rained in the night and everything was cool and fresh, the scents of roses mingling with the rich brown loam of earth.

Helen settled herself on her knees and picked up her pruning shears and set to her task. While she worked, her mind roamed over events of the past few days. She had had a little disagreement with Amy Ford the day before, and though both sides had apologized, the memory of it rankled in her soul, still. She trembled a little as she remembered how cold and pale Amy had been to her, all because Helen had been nice to Irene at supper!

Irene…if only there was some way to bring the cousins around to seeing that Irene was not so bad. If only Irene should try her hardest to mind her tongue around them, there might be some hope for it! But Irene followed every nice thing up with a sharp or critical comment—she seemed not to be able to help herself about it. But in the secret places of Helen's heart, she knew that even if Irene was perfect, all the time, the cousins would still stand against her.

They did not dislike Irene because she was cold, or haughty, or vain, or even because she was different. Helen knew that they disliked Irene on principle, for what she represented, which was the biggest change that any of these children had ever known. It was the fact that Irene was somehow _stealing_ Uncle Shirley—confidant; playfellow; steady, perpetual friend—from them. It was, after all, how the Bible put it: a man shall leave his family and cleave to his wife. The cousins would be feeling some of the same way if Uncle Shirley were marrying Aunt Una, as they wished—though they might never admit it!

But didn't they see that that could never_ really_ happen? Uncle Shirley would not turn his back on them. He would still be the same. And Irene really was not so bad, once you saw past her prickly patches. Helen sighed, and then, as if she had conjured the woman with her thoughts, she saw Irene coming through the trees.

Irene looked simply beautiful. Helen was not usually fond of her ripe, ruddy good looks, but today Irene had left off her makeup, and her hair flowed loose over her shoulders. She wore a white dress, belted with a blue sash, with a graceful ruffle that flowed around her neck and left her shoulders bare. She was barefoot, and she looked younger, and sweeter, than Helen had ever seen her look. But her face also looked troubled, she lowered it to sniff the pale peach roses that were Helen's pride and joy.

Irene had passed the flower patch several times before, but she was, Helen noticed, only really seeing it now. "Whose garden is this?" Irene marveled, standing to survey it.

"It's mine," Helen told her, shyly.

"Yours!" Irene laughed. "I suppose it's your grandmothers, and she lets you help her with it. That's awfully nice of her."

"This is my garden," said Helen firmly. "I don't—I don't let anybody help me with it, really. I know it's selfish of me—but there is so much space here, and I wanted _this_ little patch to be my own. Mother says it's only natural—that being the youngest in a family of kids will do that to you. Do—do you have brothers and sisters, Aunt Irene?"

Irene settled herself on the grass beside Helen and hugged her knees to her chest. "I have a brother," she said. "Jim. He's much older than me. By the time I was born he had his own life with his own interests. When I was thirteen, he married and moved over harbor. We just didn't have much in common."

"That sounds lonely," Helen commented, twisting a bit of wisteria around the trellis her father had fashioned for her.

"I guess it was," Irene sighed. "I didn't have many friends, growing up. Rilla was my friend for a while. And Olive Kirk hung around. But I fell out with both of them. People were always being so hurtful to me."

Helen felt a deep sympathy for Irene. To not have any friends! Her little heart expanded with sorrow for the pretty woman in front of her. "People can only hurt you when you let them," she pointed out. "And _everybody_ hurts everybody else at some point. If you just—throw people away—when they do, you won't have anybody left to _be_ your friend."

"I always felt so different from the other girls," Irene sighed. "Mother had pretensions of grandeur—she was a McNairn—one of the Charlottetown McNairns. We only moved to the Glen because Father's work was here. You've seen our house, haven't you? As pretentious an abode as there ever was! With all that white iron scrollwork, and bay windows like carbuncles on the sides…Mother had it built to her specifications. When I was very small, Mother told me that we weren't like all the other Glen families. We were _quality_. And I believed her for the longest time—until I met Harold, my first husband, and moved to Charlottetown with him. And there I was so _dowdy_, so provincial! I didn't fit with the Glen St. Mary folks because I had fancied myself above them—and then I didn't fit with the city people, because they fancied themselves above me. People have long memories, little Helen—when I moved back to the Glen, after my husband died, people hadn't forgotten the girl I used to be, who used to turn her nose up at them."

"People can't just forget," Helen said wisely. "They have to forgive, too. And you have to ask them to forgive—with your words _and _actions. Was—was your first husband a nice man, Aunt Irene?"

Irene hesitated—for a moment Helen thought she would not answer. But then she did. "He was so busy with work, when we were first married. And then he was sick—sick for so long—and he was so ill he hadn't the energy to remember to be nice, I suppose. He was nothing like Shirley." Helen reached for her shears, to attack her hydrangea bush, and Irene closed her white hand over Helen's, and held it for a long moment.

"Helen," said Irene, looking long and deep into her eyes, "Should I marry Shirley?—Should I go through with it? Do you think I can make him happy?"

Conflicting emotions fought in Helen's chest. _I'm just a _girl, she wanted to say. _You shouldn't be asking me this_. But then, who else could Irene ask? Oh, if the cousins were there, to hear this! They would tell Helen to tell Irene _no_. And they would be so grateful if Helen did—they would not be so cold to Helen anymore, if she were the one to call things off between Uncle Shirley and Irene! Helen would be a hero in their eyes, and Helen _could_ do it, if she wished, with only one simple word.

But Helen could not do it. "If you love him," she said, carefully. "Then I don't see how you could do anything _but _marry him."

Irene nodded. She was quiet awhile, digesting this. And then she asked another question. "You children—you children don't like me very much, do you?" Irene turned her bright blue eyes on Helen's face, searchingly. "Oh I want you to—for I like you—but you don't, do you?"

Helen was in agony. She could not _lie_ and tell Irene the cousins did like her, when they so obviously didn't. But then: she could not tell that truth if it would hurt Irene! Helen looked up to the white clouds scuttling over head; they were no help. Finally she faced her, and said, slowly, and honestly:

"I think the cousins _would_ like you—if you only tried to talk to them as if they were—something more than children. Other people see children and think of them a certain way. But to ourselves, Aunt Irene, we're getting older every year—we don't see ourselves as babies. We have our own hopes and dreams and they are very important to us, and we don't want them to be laughed at. We want other people to take us seriously, too. And besides—_I _like you. You will always have a friend in me."

Too much of this kind of talk was uncomfortable for Irene Howard English. She stood and went over to inspect the flowers on the other side of the patch. "What are these blue ones, here? They're so pretty."

"They're columbines," Helen explained, a little shyly. "And they're for _you_."

"For me?"

"Yes." A blush suffused Helen's pale cheeks and she lowered her face in the flowers to hide it. "I planted them in the spring, just after Uncle Shirley announced his engagement. I thought you might like to have them in your bride's bouquet—they can be your something blue, for luck."

"How thoughtful of you, dear," Irene said softly, and she smiled—a true smile. For a moment Helen's heart soared upwards on the wings of hope—but then Irene ruined it. "You'd never think," she said, in her normal, strident tone, facing the garden again, "That a little ignorant girl could grow flowers such as _this_! It really boggles the mind!"

Helen heaved a sigh as she watched Irene float away. Would the woman _never_ learn?

* * *

"Why don't you write 'Your eyes are the blue of columbines?'" Cam suggested, peeking over his sister's shoulder at the empty page before her.

Sally scowled. "I had Uncle Shirley write about Aunt Una's eyes in the last letter. I don't want to do it again. She'll think he doesn't notice anything else about her."

"Write about something else, then," Cam said, shrugging.

"I'm trying to think of something, _Cameron_," Sally said furiously. "But I can't. I never knew how difficult it was to write a love letter. It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. No wonder Romeo and Juliet killed themselves."

"It shouldn't be difficult at all," Cam pointed out. "Just think of something about that person that you like especially. Say 'your dark hair is like a raven's wing, and your beautiful brown eyes are like melted chocolate.'"

"Aunt Una doesn't have brown eyes," said Selwyn Ford, with a strange look at his cousin.

Cam shrugged again and glared at his sister. "You're a writer, Sally. You're supposed to know how to do this. We're all depending on you. We only have six days left until the wedding. You'd better think of something fast."

"It doesn't work that way." Sally glared back at her brother. "I have to think of my _muse_, Cam."

"Think of Aunt Irene," Wynnie coaxed her. "Think of how awful it would be if Uncle Shirley married her. Think of Aunt Una, and how much we'd rather Uncle Shirley married _her_, instead."

Sally threw her pen down in disgust. "It's no use," she moaned, flopping on her back onto the rag rug that covered the garret floor. "I'm not a writer. I just play-act at being one. I feel so—_blocked_, now. I'm sure I'll never write another word as long as I live."

"Why don't you listen, instead?" asked Claire, coming dancing into the garret. "I've just been downstairs to get the mail, and what do you think? There's a letter here from the Goldens—for all of us!"

"Oh, read it, please!" begged Sally, sitting upright and pushing her hair from her face, her troubles forgotten.

"Let me call the others." Claire put her fingers in her mouth and whistled, two long notes and a short one, their special call. In a moment they heard the sound of feet thundering up the garret stairs, and the rest of the cousins appeared.

"A letter from the Goldens," Claire explained, to their questioning looks. "Now, sit down here on the rug and I'll read it."

Sally though it a little unfair that Claire should get to read it, and that they might have drawn straws for that honor. But on the other hand, she did want to hear what her chums had to say, and didn't want to waste time arguing. So she sat down, Indian-style, and waiting impatiently as Claire slit the envelope.

_Dear friends_—"It _looks _like a girl's handwriting, so it must be Bess," Claire said in an aside—_how dearly we miss you already! Harry and Artie and I always have fun playing together but there is something lacking from Camelot without our other players. Sally, what a thrilling Morgan Le Fay you were—and Cam, what a desperately impish Merlin! We have given up trying to work around your absences and now we are playing Lewis and Clark, instead, for it only calls for three people—I'm Sacajewea, the Indian guide, and I find it thrilling. But I do miss being Queen—you will come back soon, won't you? I promise to rule with a benevolent hand if only you will. _

_It has been fine weather here at Echo Lodge for nearly a week but today it rained, and the echoes have gone into hiding. I feel so lonesome without them—you would think a girl with two grown brothers could not _be _lonesome, but sometimes I do get that way, anyhow. Sometimes it scares me to think that people are so fleeting in life—that Harry and Artie and I may not always be together, and have each other to depend on. That is why I am so glad to have my friends, and to have all of you dear people to count among them, even you, Amy and Selwyn, who we have not met, but have heard so much about. I love each of you dearly—and you'll write back, to stave off the blues, won't you?_

_Cameron, I could not get Mama to write out her recipe for Turkish delight for your mother—she has been so busy—but I will get it, and as a gesture of good faith, won't you accept this sheaf of pages from Paddy in the meantime? ('Paddy' is what we call our step-father Paul—'Paul' and 'Daddy' put together.) It is the latest chapter of _Nora and the Moonglade _and it features a romantic scene between the Golden Lady and her lover, the Man-in-the-Moon. I hope you will enjoy it as much as we have… when you next visit, I shall read it to you in my Golden Lady voice, if you should like to hear._

_With fondest affection from your chums_

_Harry, Bess, and Arthur_

"Let's read it now," Sally begged, and so Claire retrieved the attendant sheets and sat down, and read the romantic interlude. And as she was reading the Man-in-the-Moon's words of love to the Golden Lady, Sally's ears pricked up and she had an idea. If she changed a few things around—'your golden loveliness' to 'your…_moonlit_ loveliness,' and 'my dear Lady' to 'my dear Una…' Yes, it _would _work! Sally got out her blue paper and picked up her pen, and promptly broke her promise of never again writing another word. Even if _most_ of this letter was composed by somebody else—she was writing it, wasn't she?


	13. The Best Laid Plans

The day turned sunny so the cousins, after making a surreptitious stop by the manse, made their way to the Glen Pond for a quick swim. It was the perfect day for it—cool and clear and hot enough for it to count. They went merrily on their way, singing and laughing together, shivering at the thought of the dark, cold water against their sweltering skin.

They had just cleared the maple grove when they came face-to-face Eddie Douglas, whom we have met before, waiting on the other side of the brook. Eddie looked far more shamefaced than the last time they had seen him. With him was his older brother Martin, who the Glen took as general proof of what Eddie himself would look like at fourteen. Marty was scowling—but then, he always was.

"Harry Golden is fourteen and he's a gentleman," Sally whispered to Claire. "Marty Douglas will still be a naughty boy at _forty_."

Sally was remembering a time, last summer, when she had shot up four inches seemingly overnight, a little ungainly in her movements until she got used to her new height. She fell over her own feet once, in Sunday school, and Marty had positively tormented her over it, following her in the street, and singing, tauntingly, "I've got a mule, her name is Sal…"

Upon which the gang of wayward youths who always followed Marty in everything chorused, in their loudest voices all together, "_Fif_teen miles on the Erie Ca_nal_!" Sally had never forgiven him—_would_ never forgive him—would be every day of forty herself before the sting went out of those remembered escapades. Martin Douglas grew up to be an elder at the church, and a boat-builder respected all over the Martimes provinces, but to Sally he would always be the wicked little boy who had besieged her in her most vulnerable time.

But today Martin did not have eyes for Sally. He was glowering with his weird white gaze at Cam, who stood easily in his swim trunks with his towel over his shoulder. "Hello, Martin," he called, pretending not to notice the older boy's discomfort. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"You shut your pie-hole, Cameron Blythe," shouted Marty, across the narrow water. "And you tell me why you pushed my brother on your way to church last week!"

Cam smiled patronizingly at him, and nodded at Gilbert, who turned to Marty with a rueful air. "He can't tell you why, if he's not allowed to open his 'pie-hole.'"

"You Blythes are always so full of yourselves!" Martin clenched his fists. "You think because you're so high and mighty and your dad's the doctor you can push _my_ brother down in the street—down in the street like a dog?"

Cam spoke, finally, in a bored tone. "I pushed your brother down—" he flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his shirtsleeve—"Because he was behaving like a nuisance to _my_ sister. We Blythes aren't _so _high and mighty, but we know, at least, how to behave when a girl refuses our affections."

"I'll 'refuse' you!" Martin roared. "I'll teach you to mess with a Douglas you—you—you _Blythe_!"

Marty's choice to make the family name sound like an epithet was an unwise decision. Cam's eyes flared suddenly black—if it were not for Helen's terrified touch on his hand, he would have raged across the brook and destroyed Martin Douglas then and there. But as it was he only shook Helen's hand off, and grit his teeth in a valiant attempt to suppress his temper.

"Not here," he said curtly. "Not now. There are ladies around. I won't risk them getting caught up in the melee."

"Send them home and then I'll pound your head into the ground," ordered Martin.

Cam looked back at his sisters and his girl-cousins—Claire was preening over being called a 'lady,' even under such terms, and then he looked back. "I don't order my siblings around, even if you do. We are on our way to the pond, and we're going to have a good time. I shan't fight you today. But if you come back here tomorrow, I'll pound _your_ head into the ground."

"Not tomorrow," whispered Sally. Grandfather had said that morning that he needed the boys the next day to help set up the tent for the wedding. Cam would decidedly _not_ be able to help, she suspected, after Marty had gotten through with him. Walt seemed to be realizing, just as Sally was, how outsized their brother was in this fight. The other boy had three years and thirty pounds on slim, lithe Cam.

"You shouldn't be fighting at all," Walter said disapprovingly. "You're bigger and older. It's not fair. Why can't you pick on someone your own size, Martin?"

"Size has nothing to do with it," Cam persisted coolly. "As dad says, 'it's not the size of the dog in the fight—it's the size of the fight in the dog.'"

"You're not dogs," Helen managed to stutter in a petrified voice. "You're _boys_. And oh, Cammie—he might _kill_ you!"

Helen meant well, but her words had quite the opposite effect than she had intended. Until that point, Cam had still been considering the possibility that the altercation might be resolved peacefully. At that childish nickname—and at the insinuation that Marty Douglas might prevail—his mind, and jaw, were set in his grim task. He would fight Martin Douglas—and he would _win_!

"Day after tomorrow, here," Cam told the older boy succinctly. Then he grinned—a slow, spreading, infuriating grin. "I'll teach you a lesson _you_ won't forget!"

"How do I know you won't run home and hide out there?" Marty sneered. "How do I know you'll show?"

Cam drew himself to his full height—for all his slimness, he was nearly tall as his father. "A Blythe always keeps his word," he said, with all the _hauteur_ he could muster. And Martin could not deny it was true. The Blythes _were_ honorable people. In response he could only glare at Cam one last time, long and piercingly, and then he whirled, and headed off up the hill toward town. Eddie Douglas followed, casting one last look over his shoulder at his lady-love. If Marty beat Cameron to a pulp—and he _would_, wouldn't he?—he knew Helen would never deign to speak to him again. All of his chances would be lost. Oh, he wished he had not told Marty about the altercation on the way to church! His shoulders slumped, and he followed his brother with his head hanging down.

Cam tossed his head, his black hair falling down over his eyes. "Well, I'm going to the pond," he said, as if nothing had happened.

"Oh, Cam," breathed Helen. "_Don't_ fight over me. I—I forbid it!"

"I _have_ to fight now, Helen," said Cam as he marched. "Don't you see? If I don't, not only your honor will be in jeopardy. But mine—and Walt's—and all the whole family's too! And you _won't_ tell," he whirled to face her, eyes flashing. "Or else."

Helen racked her brain for something to say. "What if—what if Bess Golden knew you were fighting?" she asked, finally—Bess being the sweetest, nicest person she could think of on the spot.

But she had chosen wisely, after all, and her words had a peculiar effect on Cam. He had been thinking of Bess very frequently since their meeting in Avonlea, but he had _not_ been thinking of her when he had agreed to fight Marty. What _would _she think of it? He knew that on some level, she would not approve of fighting. He pictured her rosy-red mouth falling open in dismay when she heard that her faithful 'Merlin' had been brawling with another boy. That would be very terrible: her disappointment. But then—he pictured her lips wrinkling in scorn, her eyes flashing in scorn and disgust when she learned that he had turned tail and fled, instead of fighting—like a scared little boy!

That would be even worse. He could not risk it. Cam squared his shoulders. "It will be done," he said resolutely. "And now I don't want to talk about it anymore today."

Claire sighed. "We should just go home now," she muttered. "We're all going to worry about this until it happens. It's spoiled the mood."

"You go home if you like," Cam told her, over his shoulder. "But I intend to go and swim, and I intend to enjoy myself."

"How _can_ you?" Helen wondered dubiously, but to her surprise, Cam did—or at least put on a convincing show. He swam, splashed, dunked Avery until he spluttered for air, and stood headstands on the murky pond-bottom, and appeared to have a very fine time indeed despite his impending doom. His sisters and Claire and Amy watched him, with pity in their eyes.

"Let him enjoy himself now," sighed Claire. "Who knows if he'll live to do it again?"

"Oh, don't _say_ that!" cried Helen, aghast.

* * *

That evening a bunch of sleepy, sunwarmed little people draped themselves over furniture in the cool Ingleside parlor and listened to the Cliquot Club Eskimo Show on the radio. Aunt Di was in and out, counting the place settings to see how many she needed to borrow from the manse for the wedding supper. Aunt Una had come down to help and was now rubbing cream into Helen's fiery, sunburned shoulders.

"You're going to blister, darling," she said, pressing her lips tenderly to the girl's hot skin.

"Oh, I don't mind that," moaned Helen, allowing herself a little bout of complaining, for once. "If only they'd stop aching, I'd take all the blisters in the world."

Uncle Carl had come in to listen to Harry Reser's banjo performance, and was now perusing a sheaf of papers he had found on the sideboard, in which he seemed to be taking much delight. Every now and then he smiled—sometimes he even laughed out loud.

"What are you reading, Uncle Carl?" asked Selwyn, who was sprawled out on the carpet with his head near the speaker.

"Some yarn of a tale," was Uncle Carl's answer. "Capital, really! I wish they'd had literature like this when I was a boy. Something about a little girl who goes sailing on a moonglade one night and has adventures in the moon. By Mrs. Blythe's old pupil, Paul Irving."

Sally, who had been dropping off to sleep, suddenly opened her eyes wide.

"Listen to this," Carl chuckled. "Mr. Irving can sure lay the romance on thick. This is what the Moon-Man tells his Lady, 'Darling, you are to me like the sun to a flower—I cannot live without you. I should dry up and die if you were to go out, or away. You hold the light, and reflect it back upon the world.'"

It got very still in the room as nine pairs of eyes turned to regard Aunt Una's face, which looked very much like the face of a woman who is realizing something that she should have known all along. Sally, who had pilfered this passage of Mr. Irving's as the centerpiece of 'Uncle Shirley's' latest letter to Una, made a strangled noise, and a gesture like she would grab the pages from Uncle Carl's lap. But Una caught the girl's hand, and held it back.

"Go on, Carl," she said, in a calm, cool voice. "I'd dearly like to hear what comes next."

"More flowery stuff," murmured Uncle Carl. "Hmm, hmm, oh, here, this is good! 'My dearest lady, reach out thy lily-white hand and touch me—pull me from the moon, so that I might come down to earth, with you! For I cannot leave my home, and yet! I want to walk with you."

Sally had taken great pains to rearrange that paragraph to suit her own purposes. She had changed 'moon' to 'aeroplane,' and 'my home' to 'Irene.' But enough similarity remained for Una to recognize that passage, too. She turned her blue eyes on the group of boys and girls and scrutinized each face to see which it was that looked the most guilty. It was Helen, who was close to tears at the thought that her aunt might be feeling hurt. But Una knew Helen had not written the letter that she had found in her mailbox that morning. Sally's cheeks were the next-deepest shade of red, and when she looked up to meet her aunt's eyes, she looked like the perfect picture of one who is caught out.

Carl was still laughing to himself over the pages. "Have you ever heard the like?" he asked, rhetorically.

Una answered him, still looking at her nieces and nephews. "Yes, I _have_," she said, meaningfully. "Though I don't expect to ever again."

The radio program was ending. The band played their theme song, with the seals barking in time with the music, and then the announcer cried, in his cheery voice, "That's all for now, folks!"

"Indeed it is," said Una, with just a _touch _of frost in her voice


	14. Other Peoples' Soft Spots

Helen crept over to the manse the next morning, almost with the sun. The morning was pearly gray and cool, a heaven for her sunburned little body, but Helen almost didn't notice it. Her heart was too full. She let herself in to the quiet manse and followed a warm, floury scent down the darkened hallway to the kitchen. She knew what she would find there: a tall, pale woman with sad blue eyes and shining hair, busily baking the daily bread.

Aunt Una was taking the golden loaves from the oven when Helen entered. Helen waited until she had put the hot pans down and then stole up next to her aunt, winding an arm around her waist. "Aunt Una, we're so sorry," she murmured, as Una's hand came reluctantly up to stroke her hair.

Una stared straight ahead out of the back window. She could see down the hill to Rainbow Valley, and beyond that, to the sliver of blue sea that shimmered mistily in the distance. "I suppose you all had a good laugh at your prank," she said stiffly. Una was not often stiff, and especially not with Helen. But she had as much of the pride of the good Scotch Merediths in her soul as any of the rest of them, and it had decided to assert itself now.

Helen lifted a tortured face to her aunt's and pleaded with her with her eyes. "It wasn't a prank, darling," she whispered, to the woman who, besides her own mother, she loved best in the world. "Do you think we'd want to hurt _you_?—to _make fun_ of you? Oh, Aunt Una—it _wasn't_ that. We only thought—_they _thought—that you, and Uncle Shirley…"

Una saw her distress and relented. "Sit down, darling one," she instructed her niece in a gentler tone. "I think the story will come out easier with a hot cross bun and a glass of nice cold milk to help it, don't you?"

Helen oozed relief at the change in her aunt's voice. She accepted the bun and the milk and set about to eating hungrily. And Aunt Una was right—between bites, her story did come out, more easily than she would have thought. Maybe, though, it was just that it was easy to tell things to dear Aunt Una.

"So the cousins thought that it would be much better, if you and Uncle Shirley should fall in love with one another," she finished, pressing her fingers to the plate to pick up stray crumbs—Aunt Una made the best hot cross buns that Helen, who did not remember Susan Baker, had ever tasted. "They didn't mean to cause you any trouble or worry."

Una digested this, leaning her elbows on the table and cradling her little, pointed chin in her hands. "You say 'the cousins' thought," she pointed out. "You didn't, Helen-kin?"

Helen blushed. "I—I don't have anything against Aunt Irene. And I don't believe it's my place to meddle in Uncle Shirley's business. I'm just a child—what can I know? And Irene is—_nice_, in certain spots. I thought, too…"

"Thought what?"

"Everyone is worried that if Uncle Shirley gets married, we'll have to share him," Helen said, looking up at Una appealingly and a little ashamedly. "I love Uncle Shirley, of course—but if you married him, we'd have to share _you_, too, Aunt Una. You—you wouldn't have—any time for us, anymore, either. And I couldn't bear that."

Something that never diminishes in pleasure, even at middle age, is the sincere sentiment of being needed and wanted. Una looked at the pale little girl with love in her eyes. "You could never lose me," she said softly. "Not even if I married a millionaire and moved to Timbuktu. None of you children—but especially you, Helen. Why—I feel sometimes, when I'm with you that I know exactly what it must be to be a mother. I love you as if you were my very own little girl."

"I'm awfully selfish though, aren't I?" Helen was her own worst critic. "I should _want_ you to fall in love, because I love _you_. And Uncle Jerry always says that a life without love is not worth living."

Una took her hand and held it to her lips. "But I _have_ love in my life, Helen. Uncle Jerry means that _any_ kind of love is worth living for, not just the kind between husband and wife."

"But," Helen persisted, still worried, "Aren't you lonely, Aunt Una? Wouldn't you like to know what it is like, at least—real, romantic love? Haven't you ever loved anybody that way?"

Una met the girl's clear hazel eyes—so like her father's—in her heart-shaped face—so like her mother's—but the gentle spirit that shone out there was all her own. Only one member of the Blythe family had ever come close to matching her in tenderness, in sensitivity to the emotions of others. Una thought of him every day, but now, she found that she had not _really_ remembered him in years. Not his _true_ spirit—only little what-ifs that drove her crazy with their tantalizing sweetness. It had been fifteen years since Walter Blythe had died at Courcelette and for the first time since then Una really _remembered_ him: not the idea of him, but the way he had really been.

Una had loved Walter for so long. But she had never been sure of how he felt. Oh, he had had a soft spot for her, perhaps—he had mentioned her in his last letter, which she had pressed between the leaves of her Bible. But what was that, in the scheme of things? It was such a slim claim to his heart; others had more. And now she was nearly forty—twice as old as Walter had ever been. She had gone ahead, and those secret dreams of her youth were behind her. Walter had been the great love of her girlhood—she was a woman now.

But the girl Una had once been _had_ loved Walter Blythe, regardless of whether or not he had ever thought of her that same way. And that girl was still there, underneath. Her love was no less real because it had been forsaken by the passage of time, the bounds of earthly experience.

Una smiled at the anxious Helen. "I did love someone once. I'm not sure if he loved me. He died—and I was never able to find out. But that didn't stop me loving him. I loved him for a great many years, madly, and with my whole heart."

"And—did you stop? Loving him, I mean?"

"Not exactly." Una thought of how to explain. "That is the cruel thing about death, little Helen—when you lose someone, you will one day have to go where they can't follow. If he were alive today, and was a grown up man, my age—my _equal_—I might love him still. Or we might have quarreled at some point, or had a falling out, or I might have found someone else to love. I don't know. I can't say. I never had anything of him but memories—and dreams. But the dreams of him were always so sweet that I never wanted to try and dream about anybody else. Because what-might-have-been with him was dearer to me than what-_could_-be with any living person. Do you understand, dearest?"

"I _think_ so," said Helen, seriously.

Una could not resist asking: "Do you think that's foolish of me, Helen?"

"No." Helen shook her head. "I think it's _beautiful_. I wish I could have known him, Aunt Una—this man who could live for so long in your heart. And you aren't—lonely, darling?"

Una dimpled. "I could never be lonely in a family such as ours," she laughed. "I haven't time to be." She opened her arms and Helen climbed on her knee, to be encircled in that warm embrace. Una held the girl tightly, and kissed her pale hair. "I wish you could have known him, too," she murmured against her hair, thinking of how Walter would have delighted in this sweet-hearted little niece of his. "Because, Helen—_he would have loved you_—just as much as I do."

* * *

"For heaven's sake," said Aunt Rilla, around the pins in her mouth, "Stand _up_ straight, Sally, or you're going to have a crooked hem."

Sally obligingly put her shoulders back, and scrutinized herself in the full-length mirror while Aunt Rilla worked around her feet. Beside her, Claire was turning her head this way and that, trying to catch her best angle. The old mirror in the House of Dreams was very flattering, and Sally thought that Claire looked absolutely lovely in her bridesmaid dress. For that matter, Sally was a little startled when she saw how pretty she looked, herself.

Irene had said the dresses would be pink, and Sally, who was not fond of that color, imagined some sickly, candy shade. But she should have known that Irene's fashion sense was better than that. The fabric was a beautiful deep rose color, the very hue of the heart of summer. It brought out the creamy tints in Sally's freckled skin, made her cheeks rosy, and—wonder of wonders!—turned her auburn hair positively _brunette_.

The fabric was a fluid, liquid, seamless silky fall—_crepe de chine, _Irene had called it. It fell to mid-calf—tea length, another Irenism—and had lace cap sleeves that covered her shoulders. A wide sash tied around the waist, the ends hanging down and floating out when Sally moved—which she was trying not to, in deference to Aunt Rilla. But she could not help swaying _just_ a little. Oh, despite what it stood for—she _loved_ this dress!

Irene was standing behind Rilla, with one red-nailed hand laid appraisingly against her lips. "A little higher in on the right side of the hem," she said, critically. "It's lopsided, as is."

Rilla glared at her. "Would _you_ like to do this, Irene?"

"Oh, dear Rilla, don't be silly!" Irene laughed, tossing her blowsy curls. "I haven't a domestic bone in my body, you know. Poor Shirley, what a wife he's getting! I'm not a whit _matronly_—not like _you_."

Rilla said nothing, but Sally could _feel_ the indignation emanating from her aunt. 'Matronly' was a word that Rilla hated. But she said nothing—Irene was not worth it. Rilla merely set to work at the other side, pinning the hem up a slight fraction of an inch, as Irene had directed.

Irene shifted and looked again. "Now it's _too_ high," she sighed.

Rilla heaved a sigh of her own, ripped the pins out, and began again. Irene, sensing the mood for once, laughed nervously. "Dear, dear, don't look so _pained. _I'm sorry, I'm sure. And I am being too exacting, aren't I?" Her mouth faltered, and her voice sounded high and a little thin at her next words. "I just want everything to be _perfect _on the day I marry Shirley," Irene quereled, rubbing her arms as though she were suddenly cold. "He—he works so hard. I want him to show him I'm grateful by giving him the best wedding day imaginable." She nibbled at her lip, nervously. "That's not so bad of me, is it?"

Sally looked into the mirror and met Claire's eyes. They looked just as surprised as Sally's. It was so—well, it was _unlike_ Irene to think of someone else that way, wasn't it? Sally racked her brain, and found she could not remember another time when she had heard Irene say something so complementary of another person; a time when she had put someone else's feelings and desires above her own. Could it be that they had gotten it all wrong? Could it be that underneath her self-interested exterior, Irene really _cared_ about other people?

Aunt Rilla sounded as surprised as they felt when she spoke. "I think that's very considerate of you, Irene," she approved, standing and brushing her red-brown curls from her eyes. "Of course we all want the wedding day to be nice for Shirley _and…_you. There, now. Come and inspect the girls' dresses and give me your final say."

Irene stood before them and scrutinized them a long while. Under her gaze, Sally felt very small and silly. She wondered if Irene was counting her freckles—or noticing the gash on her knee, from where she'd fallen in the driveway yesterday. She sucked in her little round belly and stood with her shoulders back. She watched Irene, and waited for the verdict. It couldn't be a good one—there was a strange look in Irene's eyes.

"You're so pretty," Irene said honestly, as she looked at the two young girls, stunning them even further. "Why—when I look at you, I remember what it was like, to be your age. How the years fly by! I never imagined when I was twelve that one day I'd be _thirty-seven_—a widow, with no children of my own." Irene turned and faced the mirror, and put a hand up to her cheek. It was very pretty, yet, but there was no comparing it to the young, fresh faces of the girls who stood on either side. The bloom in it was put there by a healthy dose of rouge, and little lines emanated from her eyes—little tired lines.

"Where has my youth gone?" Irene wondered. "Oh, I wish that I was prettier—prettier for him!"

A conflicting wave of emotions washed over Sally, covering her from head to foot. It was very much like the feeling that she had felt when she had read her chapter on Aunt Una two days ago. For all her barbs, Irene was a _person_, with hopes, and dreams, and fears, and foibles. And soft places, tender to the touch. What did she have—besides her looks and her pretty clothes? She had no especial talent—no especial friends. Sally's heart turned a slow somersault in her chest. If it had been anybody else, she would have run over and flung her arms around her neck.

But as it was—given their history—she could only lay a hand uncertainly on Irene's arm. "You _are _pretty," she said, sincerely—and a little grudgingly, it must be admitted. "But you shouldn't worry if you weren't. There are other ways of being beautiful, that don't involve the way you look on the outside. But _I _like the way you look on the outside. You look like—like a rose, at the very height of summer. The new buds are very sweet, that is true, but it is the full, open flowers that everybody falls in—_ow_!"

Claire's face in the mirror was the perfect picture of a storm cloud. Sally rubbed the place just above her elbow where Claire had pinched her, to stop her stroking Irene's feelings. Irene turned around and Claire mouthed, _what are you doing_?

Sally glowered herself, and refused to mouth _I'm sorry_. She could not help it if she wanted to make other people feel good about themselves. Grandmother Blythe said it was a _gift_. But all the same, Claire's pinch had pulled Sally out of her dream world. By the time she turned back to the mirror her words had taken root in Irene, who had a hand to her throat, a satisfied smile restored to her lips.

"Like a rose," she was murmuring, happily. "Well, I suppose that _is _one way of looking at it." She turned back to Sally, to bestow a chilly kiss on her cheeks—no parts of their anatomy actually touched—Irene was back to her cold, arm's length ways. All of the warmth and vulnerability were gone out of her. She fluffed the frill of lace at her collar in a self-satisfied way and smiled, showing a mouthful of long, white teeth.

"You're _awfully_ pretty yourself, little Sally," she said, in a loud, condescending voice. "And I'm _sure_ your red hair will darken as you grow up."

It was like a slap in the face, this abrupt turn. Irene didn't need stroking, Sally realized. It had all been a ploy for attention. _Some _people were like that—Rainie Pye, in Avonlea, was always deprecating herself so that other people would tell her how terrific she was. Rainie ate it up like ice cream—and so did Irene. Sally usually didn't fall for such tricks. So why had she today? She fanned her burning face and decided to chalk it up to the heat—the day _had _turned very warm. Oh, _oh_! Red hair, indeed!


	15. An Affair of Honor

Ingleside was sleeping. Shrouded in darkness, with fireflies winking around the windows, she had settled herself for the night as, one by one, her inhabitants dropped off to dreamland. In the big bedroom, Dr. Blythe and his wife were slumbering away, oblivious to the night wind pulling at the curtains, imploring them to wake up, and come out and play. Down the hall, Faith Blythe was watching her curly-haired husband sleep, and silently begging Sissy Elliott of the Upper Glen to put off having her baby one more night. Di Blythe slept in the room sacred to her girlhood, and dreamed marvelous dreams. When she woke up, they would seem so real to her, that it would be a shock that they hadn't actually _happened_. On the mantelpiece in the parlor, Gog and Magog kept watch, ears pricked, waiting for the clock to strike twelve, so that they might bound down onto the hearth and give up joyful barks before assuming their rightful positions. Jem Blythe told his children it was that way, when they were small, and even though she was old enough to know better, Helen could not shake a little peculiar belief that they _did_. The clock chimed—she snuggled, without waking, in her aunt's arms—she had wanted to sleep with Aunt Di tonight.

In short, the place was a perfect picture of peace, except for one light in the garret window, that burned steadily out over all.

Claire Meredith was pacing, the legs of her pajamas flopping over her feet. "Think," she ordered the tired group of boys and girls who were assembled on the red and blue rag rug. Avery had the audacity to yawn, his face growing extremely ugly as he contorted it. His sister fixed him with a glare.

"You might yawn," she said fiercely, "But nothing gets done by yawning." She turned her ferocious brown-eyed scowl on each of them in turn. "Don't you realize we have utterly failed? It's _four days_ until Uncle Shirley and Irene are married. We've tried three different approaches and all of them have been disastrous."

"Well, it's just as much your fault as ours," said Cameron, angrily. "You keep yelling at us to _think_—what are you doing, Claire? Why don't _you_ think of something, if you're smart enough to give the orders?"

Walt was peacemaker, as usual. "Let's not fight, for heaven's sake," he breathed, exasperated. "Nothing at all will get done if we spend our time fighting. Here's an idea: what if one of us should get sick? Then they'd have to postpone the wedding."

"Postpone," Gilbert Ford pointed out. "Not _cancel_."

"But it could buy us some time," said Claire, ruminatively. She glanced around the group, and settled her eyes on Selwyn. "Wynnie, do you know where your appendix is?"

Wynnie put a hand tentatively on his right side.

"Good, just there exactly. I looked in Grandfather's medical books and saw that appendicitis' symptoms are nausea and fever and pain, right there. Do you think you could do a good job at having a pain—and complaining of sickness in your stomach?"

"I don't know," Wynnie admitted.

"That's stupid, Claire," Cam shook his head at her. "It would never work. When Billy Marr had his appendix out last year he was back at home within three days. And nobody would _care_ if Wynnie couldn't come to the wedding! He's just a kid! It would all go on without him and nobody would even know he was missing!"

"Thanks a lot," said Selwyn darkly.

"Besides," Cam went on, in for the kill, "Wynnie could never convince Dad and Grandfather he was sick. He's couldn't play it convincingly—he's not Bess Golden."

The group sat in silence for a little while. Claire picked at a loose thread on the hem of her nightgown, an idea forming in her mind. It got clearer and clearer, until finally it took shape. "Well, what _about_ Bess Golden?" she wondered. "What about all the Goldens? They're smart—probably smarter than us. I heard Aunt Di say they went to a private school in Boston. We could write to them and ask their ideas—chip in a few pennies and send it by express mail tomorrow. If they wrote back right away, we might have something in time."

They all looked dubiously at her. "Well, do any of _you_ have any better ideas?" Claire wanted to know.

They didn't. The blue stationery was brought down, the letter was penned. The girls would take it to the post office first thing in the morning.

Sally hesitated as she folded the letter into its corresponding envelope. Her conscience _made _her speak before she finished her task. "I don't know," she said slowly. "If we should do this, I mean. Maybe we should just let…things take their course. Irene _is _rude at times, I'll admit. She called Aunt Rilla matronly. And she called my hair red. But is that _so _bad? Everyone makes mistakes. Uncle Shirley loves her. And she loves him, too."

Seven other pairs of angry eyes turned on her. _Turncoat_, said every one of them, and Sally dared not speak again. She licked the envelope, and sealed the flap. And then she went to bed.

* * *

None of the children could eat breakfast. Not _that_ day. Faith served them, and then watched, perplexed, as they did not eat. Only Cam ate calmly, asking for seconds, while the others looked at him as though this meal might be his last. What the dickens were they up to? Faith wondered. When they had finished eating, she stood at the door and watched them tramp solemnly through Rainbow Valley.

"Something is up," she told herself. "I don't know what—but _something _is."

If Faith had known what was to happen at the brook that noontime, she would have followed her children and escorted them home with a bee buzzing in their ears. As it was, she considered following them, anyway—when Carter Flagg arrived with a stack of chairs to be set up in the garden for the wedding. She showed him out back, glancing over her shoulder. Things were so hectic with this wedding; tonight she would find time to sit down with her children and really talk to them in a way she hadn't in a while.

"What will we tell Mother and Dad when we haul your dead body home tonight?" asked Sally mournfully of her brother. She was feeling pretty low—she was sure that Cam would be vanquished. She did not _really _believe he would be killed, but all the same, she was sorrier she hadn't been nicer to him, just in case. "Shall we tell them that it was Marty, so they can have him arrested?"

Cam sang, in a surprisingly fine tenor, the words of an old cowboy song.

_Don't say a word of the man who has killed me_

_Don't mention his name, and his name will pass on. _

He held the last note joyfully, and unconcernedly, and continued to whistle as he marched toward his certain doom.

"Oh, Cam," mourned Helen, whose eyes were red with weeping. "Cam, darling! How can you joke right now?"

"How come _you_ all are so convinced I won't lick that big, fat, slow fellow?" Cam wanted to know. "I should think that a loyal band of friends should have a little more faith in their comrade. Isn't there one amongst you who thinks I can do it?"

They regarded him balefully. Finally, Walt sighed. "Maybe Martin won't show."

But Marty was there, waiting, just on their side of the brook. It was an affront they all felt. On the side of the brook nearest the Glen Pond, anybody might play unmolested, at their will. But on the side of the brook closest to Ingleside, was Rainbow Valley territory. Martin had invaded their home turf. They had not expected their beloved valley to be so desecrated.

"There hath never been a fight in Rainbow Valley before," said Amy Ford, dubiously.

"Well, there's a first time for everything," said Cam, shaking out his shoulders. He balled his hands into fists, and smacked one into the other. But his eyes were nervous as he faced Martin.

"Ready to get your head bashed in?" the other boy grinned.

A shiver of unease passed over them but they held up, bravely. "All right, now," said Gilbert, at his most authoritative. "It's time to lay out the rules. This must be an honorable fight. First off, you girls go back, out of harm's way—at least to the maple grove. We don't want you getting caught up in things."

Another time the girls might have protested—they were an equal-minded bunch, and did not so often stand on social convention. But today the girls high-tailed it back to the tree line. Helen was last to follow.

"Are you sure you can't end things peacefully?" she asked the boys.

"Go away, Helen," growled Cam. There was the first flash of anger in his eyes, like a dull bark of thunder rolling closer, closer.

"We won't intervene in the fight between the two principals," said Gilly, eying Eddie Douglas and two of the Elliott boys from over-harbor, who ran in Marty's crew. "No matter how bad it gets. It's their fight, not ours. Agreed?"

"Agreed," chorused Martin's henchmen reluctantly.

"In the stories, this is where the knights say something about their honorable intentions," Walt said, uncertainly. "Cam, I guess you should make a statement about what it is you're fighting for. Otherwise it's just a fight for violence's sake—and we can't have that."

"I am fighting because Martin Douglas has impugned our family name," said Cam, virtuously—and a little fearfully. For Marty had started smacking _his_ fist into _his_ palm, and as one of his great, meaty hands met the other, there was a louder sound then when Cam had been doing it.

"Marty?" asked Walter.

"Nuts to your knights and stories," said Marty succinctly. Quick as a flash—quicker than they would have thought such a big boy could move—his fist flashed out and caught Cameron right across the face. Helen shrieked as blood poured from Cam's nose, which was broken, and down in a steady stream over his lip, which was already starting to swell. Oh, oh! They had expected Cam to lose—but they had thought he might put up a fight, first!

Marty Douglas pummeled Cam Blythe. He punched him. He kicked him. He even—to the girls' ultimate horror—_spat_ at, and attempted to bite, him. Cam didn't have a chance. In no time at all he was on his knees, heaving, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Walt and Gil had decided, together, without speaking, that if it went on much longer, they would _have_ to break their vow and save their man. Because if they didn't, Marty _would_ kill Cameron, no hyperbole necessary.

Marty got down next to Cam and spit his words into his face. "You sissy-boy—you sissy _Blythe_—you'll cry uncle now, won't you?"

Cam could not—or did not—speak. Marty took it as an acquiescence. "And you'll say out loud that the Blythes are nothing but a passel of wimps. I want to hear you say it! You'll say that—that—your Dad walks like a peg-legged man! That your Gramps went soft since that other boy died in the war. That—your Uncle Shirley is going to marry a—

"

The word Marty used to describe Irene can not be printed here. But none of the Blythe,, Ford, or Meredith children had ever heard such a word before in their lives. Still—they knew it must be terrible, by the flesh that quivered on their necks at the sound of it. Cam's eyes flashed. Even broken, and on the ground, he began to tremble violently from head to foot. His features became set and livid, and his teeth showed menacingly in his face.

Cam was having one of his rages.

Marty continued to taunt him in a low voice, and Cam's eyes grew blacker and blacker. With a burst of brute strength, driven by the engine of anger, he pushed himself up, and rolled into Marty, knocking him down. He straddled Martin's fat belly. He was some terrible beast in a boy's body. Cam knew only three things right then. He knew by the pain in his face that something was wrong with his nose. He suspected, from the stitch in his side, that something was wrong with his ribs. And he was sure, _sure,_ that _he must make Marty stop saying these things about his family!_

He pulled back his fist and aimed a blow right between the boy's eyes. Helen's shrill scream rent the air. "Cam! Cam! Don't do it! He's down! It isn't right. _Cam_!"

Cam could not hear her. Cam was not Cam. He struck Marty, hard, point-blank in the face. And then he raised his arm, to strike again—

"What are you _doing_?" came an aghast voice from behind him. Irene English snatched Cam's arm before he could move it forward, and hauled him, in a motion that belied great, terrified strength, off of Marty. She reached down again, hauled the heavy boy off the ground, whirled the ferocious Martin Douglas around, and quick as a flash, she—

_spanked_ him!

But Irene was not done. She lunged for Cam, grabbed him, threw him crosswise, over her body—and spanked him, too! Soundly—two hearty thwacks right across the rump!

Martin Douglas surprised them all—and himself—by beginning to burble. Cam's blow had blackened one of his eyes, and it was puffed up to a slit, but tears were pouring out of it, nonetheless. "Go on home to your mother," Irene yelled at him. "And don't you come around here anymore!"

Eddie reached over to retrieve his brother. "Come on, Marty," he said, and put a protective arm around the shamefaced boy, and led him away. Somehow, Marty's triumph did not seem so triumphant when his shoulders were shaking with stunned, humiliated sobs.

Irene whirled on the rest of them. "Fighting!" she cried. "Like—animals! What on _earth_ do you have to say for yourselves?"

The cousins looked at Cam, who was sitting rather bewilderedly on the grass. His cheek had puffed up, and his lip was swollen, and his nose! They thought Cam might say something about the family honor, or that terrible word that Marty had called Irene. His rage had abated; he looked quite calm, now.

But Cam only said, in a penitent voice, "I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Irene. I shouldn't have been fighting. I shan't do it again, and I won't blame you if you tell my mother."

"_Tell_ her!" Irene cried. "I won't _have_ to!"

They watched, agog, as Cam picked himself up off the grass. He went over to Irene and put out his hand—his bruised little paw. "I'm obliged to you, Auntie," he said easily, and sincerely, and with true affection in his voice. "I would have killed Marty if you hadn't pulled me off."

"It's more likely he would have killed you," Irene said. "Don't _touch_ me—you're all bloody!" But she did shake the tips of his fingers, and then she let Cam link his arm through hers, as they started for the house. The cousins heard them laughing together and looked at each other in pure astounded silence.

"He likes her, now," Gilbert said, in a dazed voice. "Cam—of all the people!—_likes_ Irene!"

And even more surprising than that was that at that moment they were all feeling strangely proud—and grateful—of Irene. If they did not like her, exactly, they were glad she had come along when she had. They were glad that Irene had put a stop to things. They would never admit it—not to each other, or themselves—but they _admired_ the way she had swooped down, and so decisively put an end to things. It had been fearsome—and, oh, yes!—a little _funny_ to watch!

When Jem Blythe saw his younger son he declined to punish him, saying it looked like Cam had already learned his lesson the hard way. "You won't fight anymore, after a beating like that," he supposed.

Cam grinned his ghastly, distorted grin. "Not until the next time someone insults my family, Dad."

Jem taped his son's broken nose, and decided that the gash in his lip could use a stitch. And he must have spoken to Faith about the cause of the fight, for when she saw her son she did not scold him. "You'll look a fright for the wedding, Cameron," was all she said, shaking her head.

"Oh, no, he won't," said Irene, coming into the kitchen, brandishing her makeup bag. "There's nothing to be done about the nose, or lip, but I can cover those bruises with my Max Factor. Sit down, you little rebel, and let me attend to you."

And then, to everyone's surprise, Cam _did_.


	16. Change of Heart

Cam looked even worse the next day. His nose was healing badly and Faith a little foolishly worried over its effect on her son's good looks. But Cam was decidedly unconcerned. One of his eyes was purple, and his lip was swollen to twice its size. The rest of the unbroken skin of his face was swathed in a patchwork of green and yellow bruises. To tell a long story short, he was about as ugly as a boy of eleven could be. Even Avery Meredith felt sorry for him, and patted his scarred brown paw sympathetically.

"I guess Marty got the worse of it in the end," he told his cousin. "We heard from Aunt Una this morning that Mary Douglas did what you couldn't. She lambasted Martin for fighting—Eddie said he has to sit on a cushion his rump's so sore from the spankings he's had."

"That's just like Mary Vance," said Aunt Di, passing through the hallway. "If she didn't spank her children so often and so rigorously perhaps they wouldn't feel the need to fight with other children."

"But what's my excuse, Aunt Di?" wondered Cam, with a wicked grin.

"You've just a natural bad streak, I suppose, Cameron." But Di said it lovingly, coming into the room and perching on the bed to stroke the boy's wounded head. She kissed his black hair. "There's Mother calling—_do _try and be good, little invalid. Someone less wise to your antics would say that you're pretty safe from scrapes up here—but I know better."

Marty had not broken any of Cam's ribs, but he had strained the muscles there, and so Cam was confined to bed for the rest of the day. If there was anything Cameron Blythe hated, it was being confined to bed. When he had had measles two years ago he had set the house in uproar, so black were his moods over his loss of freedom. "He will live," said Jem, after ascertaining that Cam's strain was particularly virulent, "But, Lord help us—will we?"

Today, however, Cam was taking his imprisonment with a relatively cheerful air. Irene had come in that morning with a stack of comic books, and the cousins, lingering in the hallway, had heard peals and peals of laughter emanating from beyond the door. When Irene went away, Cam summoned them, and they crept in, to visit him.

"How are you, Cam?" Sally asked, a little more deferentially than she would otherwise have, owing to his face. This mottled specimen didn't feel like her dark handsome brother. But Cam's gray eyes twinkled in his face, merrily.

"I'm right as rain," he said. "And I called you all in here because I want to get one thing straight. As far as it goes, trying to break things off between Uncle Shirley and Irene? I'm out. I won't have a thing more to do with it. I _want_ Uncle Shirley to marry her—he's lucky to have her—if I was a little bit older, I'd give him a run for his money."

Helen flung her arms gingerly around his neck. Her face shone with happiness. Finally, she had an ally—and in the most unexpected person!

Claire Meredith's face was Helen's exact opposite. She had wrinkled up her lips in scorn. "But—why?" she asked, confused. "You hated Irene desperately a day ago. What's changed about her, Cam?"

Cam shrugged, wincing as he did. "Nothing about _her_ has changed. Only I have. I see now that she's her good points—and I _like_ her, Claire. It's simple as that. She's got a tang to her—she gives spice to life. Don't you get tired of everybody mooning and dreaming all the time? _I _do. I'm dreamy myself—but sometimes, a change is nice."

Walter regarded his brother with a hang-dog expression. "What about our plan, though?"

Cam was unconcerned. "You others might carry on if you want, I won't tell. I like a little bit of a ruckus. But I shan't help you anymore, or conspire with you. And I'll do my best to work against you if I can. So, basically: you're on your own, from here on out."

The cousins felt snubbed by his treason against them. Cam's sheer energy was a boon in any situation. Walter grumbled, "It's not like you'd be able to help us, anyway. You have to stay in bed."

Cam shrugged again. "I don't care. Now, leave me alone—and tell Mother to send me up more ice cream. If she won't, tell Aunt Di. _She_ will."

"Aunt Di is out walking with Uncle Carl," sneered Claire. "And I won't be your pigeon. Get your ice cream yourself." She pulled a face at Cam, and then stalked out before he could make one in return. But then—he really didn't need to. His natural face was bad enough, at the moment.

One by one the cousins followed her. Sally was the last to go. She grinned wickedly—and got back at Cam by performing the one trick he couldn't manage—it infuriated him that he couldn't. She touched the tip of her tongue to her nose, saucily, and then directed it at him. "Have fun in bed, _traitor_," she whispered.

But deep down, Sally felt a peculiar gladness that Cam was out of it. Without him, their ship lost steam, and foundered, and life could go back to being settled again. No scheming. No plotting. And she would not have to keep imagining Irene's face all streaked with tears.

* * *

"Things are really starting to look like a wedding around here," Sally commented to Uncle Shirley later that day. He had come over in the afternoon to see Cam, and the cousins thought that Cam must have told him more of the story than he had told the others—he must have mentioned that terrible word—because when Shirley left the sickroom, his eyes were flashing in a way they had never seen before. He had marched downstairs and seated himself in Faith's kitchen, noting approvingly how the heat from the oven had made her hair spring up into little curls around her face.

"If you punish that boy, Faith, I'll never forgive you," Shirley told her, reaching across the table and snatching up a sugar-violet that Aunt Nan was using to decorate the wedding cake.

"How could I punish him?" Faith laughed, a little helplessly. "I'd be something of a hypocrite, wouldn't I? All I could remember when I heard what'd happened was Walter Blythe's fight against Dan Reese of long ago. He, too, was fighting for his family. And I was thrilled enough over that—I gave him my colors to wear on my arm, you recall."

"I don't recall," Shirley said, leaning back in his chair. "I didn't run around much with you all in those days—I was just at the age of being left out. Too old to be a baby, like Rilla—too young to be one of the group. Carl was a scant year older and it rankled terribly in my soul that he was allowed to. I do remember Walter coming home after that fight, though. He seemed so fearsomely grown-up to me—my big, admirable boy-brother."

Faith turned from the bowl of chicken salad she was making up at something in Shirley's voice. "Did we exclude you from our doings, Shirley?" she asked him. "I always thought you had your own little-boy affairs. But perhaps we were very rude to you, back then."

For a moment, old-remembered hurt flashed up in Shirley's face. But then, just as quickly, he quirked his mouth up into a foolish grin. "It's the curse of being caught in the middle of such a large group of brothers and sisters and friends, I suppose, and being the quiet one, to boot. You all seemed to have accepted me pretty well, now—but I'd feel much more involved if you gave me another one of those candy-flowers, Faith."

She laughed, and gave him one, but Shirley winked at her, and grabbed another. He kissed his pretty sister-in-law on the cheek and went outside to the verandah, where Sally was surveying the action on the law. Shirley gave one of the flowers to her.

Ingleside _was_ looking pretty weddingish. The whole house had been cleaned, the floors scrubbed and waxed, the furniture dusted, the windows washed. The clutter had been picked up and put away, and there were new curtains at the parlor windows—handsome toile drapes, with scenes of coolie-men with rickshaws and parrots and little thatched huts done in green and blue. Grandmother had made up some nice cushions for the sofas, which had been recovered after many years, much to her delight.

The dining-room table shone like mahogany, and yesterday, Faith had attacked the brass chandelier with a rag and some tooth-paste. It had seemed ridiculous to Sally at the time, but now it shone with a most beautiful soft glow. The lace curtains at the window had been bleached and hung up again; they were whiter than white against the new paper, a print of apple-blossoms against a soft yellow background. The beautiful rosebud spray tea set that Grandmother had inherited from Marilla Cuthbert had been taken down from the china cabinet and was waiting on the sideboard. Sally liked to steal over to it, and hold one of the delicate cups up to the light. The bone china was so fine she could see the outline of her thumb on the other side of it!

The wedding supper would only be held in the dining room if it was to rain on Saturday. Otherwise, it would be held in the yard, under the fluttering canopy that Uncles Jerry and Carl were hanging. Two long tables would be set up beneath it, covered with white cloths, and dotted with votives in crystal holders. And what a feast they _would_ have! Ham and chicken salad and jellies and ices and orange-cranberry relish and fruit cocktail in a melon carved to look like a basket. And Irene had found, in one of her magazines, a recipe for something called _lo mein_, with noodles and carrots and celery and a brown, spicy sauce! Sally knew they would have Aunt Rilla's special punch, with pineapple juice, Cliquot club, and maraschino cherries, because she had seen Mother take down the crystal punch bowl that day, and all the little darling matching cups!

After the supper there would be dancing. Grandfather was puttering on the porch, trying to stretch the cord of the Victrola so that the music would waft through the window and out over the lawn. The cousins were sorting through the records—lots of ragtime, and jazz, and some new, intoxicating sound called 'swing.' "Play this one, Father," Di called, and Dr. Blythe took the record, and put the needle to it. "King Porter Stomp by Benny Goodman," Grandfather read, from the label, over the swooping, jaunty, intoxicating music that was drifting out over the lawn.

"How _does_ one dance to it?" Grandmother wondered.

Shirley grinned and caught the arm of his bride, as she breezed down the verandah steps. "Let's sugar-foot," he told her, and Irene grinned, and took his hands. Together they danced in a way that Sally had never seen before but swore she would learn: a step to one side, to the other, a back step. Shirley dipped, twirled, and turned Irene. They moved so beautifully together. Sally tapped her foot as Uncle Carl and Aunt Di joined them on the lawn, trying to imitate the steps that the others were performing. But even if they practiced for a hundred years, they could not match the easy grace of Shirley and Irene together.

Jem came out to see what the ruckus was about and saw his little girl looking longingly at the dancers. "Would you like to dance, Sal?"

"Oh, yes!" Sally cried, and she let herself be twirled and dipped by her father.

The song ended, and Grandfather Blythe changed the record. The sun was dipping low through the trees, heralding the start of that slow, languid hour that brought the dark down. Grandfather Blythe played a waltz, because it seemed more suitable, and Sally's father made her a courtly bow.

"This dance belongs to your mother," he said, and Faith came out of the kitchen, wiping her floury hands on her apron. Dr. Blythe found his Anne-girl. Aunt Di and Uncle Carl relaxed into a dance-hold, and Irene sighed, and laid her head on Shirley's shoulder as their footsteps slowed.

Sally sat on the verandah, still, as the sky deepened and darkened. The Chinese lanterns in the trees mellowed it a bit. Oh, how she longed to be out there, dancing, with the others! Not with Dad—but with some handsome boy near to her own age. A boy with curly brown hair, and—and serious eyes—and—a square jaw. Maybe a little like Harry Golden—maybe even Harry Golden, himself.

Claire came out of the house, and sat down next to Sally, her face in shadow. As usual, she seemed to surmise what Sally was thinking without being told. "No letter from the Goldens yet," Claire sighed. "And the wedding is two days away."

Sally felt a little sore at Claire for spoiling the mood with more of this. It had been so nice and peaceful and—and dreamy, and now she was wrenched back into the world of care. "Perhaps there's nothing we can do," she said, a little spitefully, to her cousin. "Except sit back and try to make the best of things."

Claire tossed her beautiful fall of hair and adopted her haughtiest tone. "You can 'try and make the best of things,' but I won't have another thing to do with this wedding. You can _believe_ it."

"Claire, what are you going to do? You're supposed to be _bridesmaid_!"

"Maybe," said Claire, infuriatingly lofty, her lips curving in a secret smile. "And then again, maybe not."


	17. Exasperating Women!

"Ow! _Ow_! Oh, Mother—come quick! I've _hurt_ myself!"

There had been a big thudding sound in the front hallway, and now, at the sound of her daughter's voice, Nan Meredith wiped her hands on her apron and ran to see what the fuss was about. Sally, Amy and Helen, who had been helping her put the finishing touches on the wedding cake.

They found Claire crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. When she heard them coming, she raised her white face, pathetically.

"I tripped and fell," she moaned. "Oh, Mummy, Mummy—am I _broken_?"

"Let's get you up," said Aunt Nan, putting her arm around Claire's shoulders. "Can you _try_ to walk, Clairie?"

Claire piteously attempted a feeble step before collapsing against her mother. "My ankle," she groaned. "I think it's broken."

Claire was moved to the couch and Grandfather Blythe was called into investigate. "Does it hurt here, darling?"

"Oh, yes, Grandfather!"

"And here?"

"Yes! It hurts _everywhere_. I think it's _broken_."

"There's no swelling," said Grandfather. "So it's not broken—or even sprained. You may have twisted it, and strained the muscle again."

"But I _can't_ walk," mourned Claire. "How can I be bridesmaid in Irene's wedding if I can't walk?"

Until that point, Sally had been completely taken in by her cousin. Now, though, she looked at her sharply. Claire's face was a perfect picture of despondency. But—where were her tears? When Claire had bumped her head on the slope of the garret ceiling the other night she had wept copiously, and that had been _little_ compared to this. Her clear, brown eyes were completely dry—though now and again she managed a dry sob or two.

"I suppose your ankle will be better by day after tomorrow," said Sally in a sharp tone. Claire looked at her, a little alarmed, but didn't give in.

"You know how when you hurt yourself, it's always worse a few days later. Oh, I wouldn't want to pin my hopes on it. I should let Irene know, so she can prepare for the worst. Mummy—you'll call and tell her, won't you?"

Nan brushed Claire's bangs back from her face and put a pillow under her feet to prop her "injured" ankle up. "Of course I will, sweets." Grandfather went into the kitchen to retrieve Claire a bowl of chocolate ice cream—he was a big believer in sweets to cure some ills. Helen fluttered about her cousin, running upstairs to bring Claire Tedkins, her brown, battered old bear. Perhaps he could give her some comfort—poor dear! Helen was such a _dupe_, sometimes.

Sally refused to budge. She stood where she was and her eyes threw daggers at her cousin. Claire saw them, and reached down for her shin.

"Ouch," she wailed, but she was not very convincing.

And besides: "It was your _left_ ankle before," Sally hissed. "You might want to get that straight before they come back."

She turned on her heel and stormed from the room.

* * *

Sally relieved her feelings in a long weep in Rainbow Valley. She and Claire had never so much as quarreled, and now they seemed to be doing it all the time. And Claire had _lied _to her—_was_ lying, to them all! Sally felt a little steam of anger in her heart. This was all Irene English's fault. Or—or—if it wasn't, _exactly_, you couldn't deny that none of this would have happened if she had not agreed to marry Uncle Shirley!

Sally was just brushing the last of her furious, confused tears from her eyes when Aunt Di found her. "Little one, would you like to drive into town with me? I'm feeling drab—and middle-aged—the green dress I chose to bring with me for the wedding is dowdy—and makes me look thick. I'm going to hit the stores, and find something new and glamorous. Why, Sally," Aunt Di peered closer at her face. "Have you been _crying_?"

"No, no," Sally told her, quickly scrubbing her face to put color back in her cheeks. "I was just—_sneezing_. It always makes my eyes water, Auntie. I'd love to go to town with you." The thought crossed her mind that Claire would not be able to go, and it would rankle with her. "I'll just run inside and put on a nicer dress—and shoes. I'll be right back!"

Once they were in Jem's coupe, winding along the red road toward town, Sally felt a little better. She did so love going anywhere with Auntie Di, who was so fresh, and funny, and girlish yet. Imagine Aunt Di feeling middle-aged! But then, Aunt Nan was her twin, and Aunt Nan was decidedly motherly, though still beautiful. Sally darted a look at her aunt, appraisingly.

"Aunt Di," she dared to ask, "Haven't _you_ ever wanted to get married?"

Aunt Di looked at her strangely from under her beaten-up old hat. Sally resolved to try and get her to buy another one while they were shopping for dresses. Sally was so focused on that terrible hat that she did not see the startled look that passed through Di's eyes.

"Why do you ask, Sally?" she wondered. People were always saying that children were more perceptive than you thought. Di herself had said it, on many occasions—how silly, to forget it, now!

"Because you are so beautiful," Sally replied, with an honesty that made Di blush. "Dad thinks you've fallen in love with an Indian brave. He thinks you'll marry him and go live in his tee-pee, and have a bunch of Indian babies."

Aunt Di threw back her head and laughed. "Some of the Indian men I know are very handsome," she said. "They are so tall and strong and well—brave. But there are laws against the Ojibwa marrying white women, you know—if a man should do it, he should lose his status in the tribe. Even if I loved someone very much, I should not ask him to give up his place for me, Sal. And they don't live in tee-pees anymore—you know that. But thank you for calling me 'beautiful.' I don't _feel_ it sometimes. I mostly feel like an old, dried-up country schoolmarm, in my thrice-darned—sometimes more!—dresses."

"We'll buy you something swell, then," Sally decided. "I've been looking at Aunt Irene's fashion magazines, you know. I'll help you find just the thing, Auntie."

"Are you children getting along better with Irene, lately?" Di slanted her eyes over to watch Sally's face as she answered.

Sally thought for a long moment. "I don't know if we're 'getting along,'" she said, finally. "But I think we're getting used to each other. But oh, Aunt Di, it would be so much easier if Irene wasn't so—so—well, this morning when she saw the cake Aunt Nan is making, she said, 'It only looks a _little_ homemade.' She meant it as a compliment—she might have said, 'It looks nearly professional!' It means the same thing. But whenever Irene is faced with a right and a wrong way to put a thought, she always chooses wrong."

"She's been like that since she was a girl," said Aunt Di. "She can't help it, I don't think. She wants so eagerly for everyone to like her, but she is always imagining up slights, and saying the wrong thing. She _means _well, I suppose." They had arrived at Eaton's Department Store, and Aunt Di turned the car off, and took her ticket from the valet. She pinned her ugly brown hat more securely against her red curls, and extended her hand in its shabby glove to Sally. "It _is _just a question of getting used to her. Dear heart! What are you thinking, Sal?"

"That you _also_ need new gloves, Aunt Diana," said Sally, sternly. "Mother would _never_ let me go out in gloves like that."

Di laughed, pulled the worn gloves from her hands, and stashed them in her purse. Their first stop that afternoon was at the glove counter.

In the dress section, Sally watched as her aunt pulled green gown after green gown from the rack. Olive drab—forest—cerulean—kelly. Every shade of green imaginable. Sally wrinkled her nose. "Aunt Di, did someone once tell you you looked good in green?"

"Yes," said Di, startled. "Do you mean I _don't_, Sally?"

"No, you do." Sally struggled to explain. "It's only that you look a little _familiar_ in green. You wear so much of it. You should try another color. Something people don't expect. Like…" Sally scanned the racks until her eyes found just the thing. "Like _this_."

It was a pale, fawn-colored gown with a pattern of darker beads. It had a low back, a square neckline, little cap sleeves, and an ecru sash. Di looked askance at it.

"It's brown," she said critically.

"It's _buff_," corrected a saleswoman, at Sally's elbow. "And it will contrast beautifully with your splendid scarlet hair."

"I don't know…" Di fingered the beads, unsure, and Sally faced her aunt with her hands on her hips.

"Aunt Diana, you _said_ you wanted to get something new because you didn't like the way your clothes made you look. And what do you do when we go to buy something new? You go for all the same kind of dresses as you have, already! You are the _most_ exasperating kind of woman!"

Di could not help laughing. "A red-haired woman always is, I'm told. Oh, give it to me, and point me in the direction of the dressing room. I'll try it on—_try_. It doesn't mean I'm definite about it. It could be something mean and green in the end."

When Aunt Di came shyly out from behind the curtain, Sally actually gasped. The shimmering fabric set off Di's creaminess so well, and her hair shimmered against the warm color. The little beads caught the light and looked gold, and the narrow sash accented her trim waist. "You look _beautiful_, darling," Sally breathed, meaning it from the bottom of her heart.

"I suppose I look all right," said Di, a little dazedly, running her hands over the skirt, twisting around to admire the back in the mirror. "But it isn't very weddingy, is it?"

"That's where the hat comes in," said Sally, firmly. "We'll take it," she whispered to the saleswoman, before Aunt Di could change her mind.

An hour later, they left the store with the dress in its bag, a pair of gorgeous brown high heels, and a hatbox, in which resided a hat, that Sally though might be _the_ Queen of Hats. It was a beautiful cream lace Florentine with a wide, floppy brim, and a bunch of tan net flowers along the brim. Sally could not resist peeking into the box to admire it, as the valet brought their car around. It looked like something Irene would wear—in fact, Irene had a hat _very_ much like this, only her flowers were a pale lilac color.

"I feel like Cinderella," Aunt Di said, as they started for home. "Thank you for today, little Sal. I think that—er—everyone will be very impressed." She looked over at the little girl, wondering if Sally had noticed her stumble.

But Sally was thinking of other things. In a box on her lap she had a beautiful pair of golden slippers to wear with her bridesmaid dress—_wait_ until Claire saw them. Oh, Aunt Di was a dream to buy them for her! She would find a way to show her how grateful she was. She was very tired. She yawned—she leaned her head against the seat. It had been a long day—a difficult one in some respects—but perfectly lovely in others. In any event, things would be better tomorrow. They always were. Her eyes fluttered closed, her long lashes brushing against her cheeks.

By the time they arrived at Ingleside, Sally was fast asleep.


	18. The Goldens Have Information

Sally was sitting, reading, on the porch steps when Norma Milgrave appeared in the Ingleside lane. Sally and Norma were in the same class at the Glen school, and were particular friends. When Claire was in Deerfield, Norma was Sally's _best_ friend—maybe, Sally thought glumly, laying her book down, Norma was Sally's best friend now, period, because Claire didn't want to be, anymore.

"Gee, Ingleside looks swell all gussied up," said Norma, hooking her fingers through the straps of her overalls and standing back to admire it. "You folks must have been so busy getting everything ready for the wedding. I haven't seen you in so long—it's why I came by. Do you want to go fishing with me, Sal? Mother said we'd have to bring Joseph along with us," here Norma sighed, at the prospect of having her younger, tow-haired brother tagging after them, "But," she brightened, "He can bait our hooks for us."

"I can bait my own hooks," Sally said emphatically. "And I don't mind if Joey comes along. I like Joe, Norma. I don't think of him as a pest at all."

"He's not your brother, is why."

Sally thought of naughty Cam, and was about to tell Norma she would willingly trade him for shy, ten-year-old Joe. But Norma, like most other girls their age, thought Cam positively dashing, and would not be convinced that he was actually a horror. Sally did not try to convince her. She stood up, stashing her book underneath the step. "I'll go ask mother if I may go, and then if she says yes, I'll get my shoes and rod and meet you back here."

Faith gave the go-ahead, and Sally scampered up the stairs to the garret after her sneakers. The door was shut tight, and Sally looked askance at it. Doors in Ingleside were hardly ever shut—people were running in and out too frequently for that. What was going on? She threw the door open to behold the cousins, minus Cam, and minus Helen, sitting in a circle on the rag rug. They looked up, startled, when Sally entered, and then guiltily slid their eyes away.

It was clear they were having a meeting of some kind, conducted in the utmost secrecy. "What are you all doing?" Sally demanded, and nobody said anything. Avery took off his glasses and began to clean them on his shirt. Amy Ford would not meet her eyes, and Wynnie began to whistle. And Claire whisked a piece of paper out of sight of Sally's line of vision.

"Nothing's going on," she said unconcernedly. "We're not doing anything at all."

Sally frowned at them for a moment, then stalked to the dormer window and threw up the sash. "Mother says I have to stay home," she called to Norma, and then she banged the window shut again. She turned to face the cousins. "I want to know what's going on, and I want to know _now_."

"_We_ have a letter from the Goldens," Gilbert told her in a proprietary way that kindled a fire of fury in Sally's breast. "We didn't think _you'd_ be interested."

This remark stung Sally to her core. Not interested! In her secret heart she liked to think that her own bond of kinship between the Golden boys and girls was stronger than anybody's, thanks to their shared traits of dreaminess and imagination. She was hurt that the others did not recognize it—that the others would try to _keep_ their letter from her! She would have liked to turn on her heel and march out of the room, except…except that a little perverse curiosity would not let her go without an answer.

"What do the Goldens have to say?" Sally asked, unable to help herself any longer. "Please won't you tell me?"

Claire cocked her head and considered the question. "I don't know if we should, now that you're on Irene's side."

"Claire! I'm not on anybody's _side_. I only think we should give Irene the benefit of the doubt." Claire snorted, and turned her face away in disdain.

"You're not on _our_ side anymore, Sally," said Walt, darkly. "We know you're getting buddy buddy with Irene. Claire told us that you called her 'beautiful.' And you're going to be her bridesmaid! Anyway, the Goldens answered our letter, concerning how to get Irene out of the picture. We didn't think you'd _want_ to hear it, since she's your new best friend."

"She's _not _my new best friend!" Sally protested. "And besides, Walter Meredith Blythe, I _wrote_ that letter _to _the Goldens. I have just as much a right as anybody to see what they've written back—_more_, even."

"Well, I'll read it to you, then," sighed Claire. "But I don't expect you'll like it."

Harry Golden had been the one to write to them, this time. _There is a little rain falling almost soundlessly around Echo Lodge right now. It's gray and overcast—a perfect day for intrigue. Bess and Artie and I have put our heads together and despite our best efforts, we can't come up with a plan to help you keep Irene English from marrying your Uncle Shirley. We wish we could, but we simply haven't any ideas other than the ones you've already tried. When grownups put their minds to a thing, it's our experience that they usually mean to do it, whatever their small fry would like, instead. _

_But the name Irene English rang a bell for Paddy—he heard us discussing her, and pricked up his ears. 'You can't mean Mrs. William English, of Charlottetown?' he asked, curiously. 'I knew her husband Bill quite well. We went to Harvard together, and he was a jolly fellow then. I saw him just before he married Miss Howard—Bill looked as happy a man as I'd ever seen. He introduced me to his fiancée, and we had a nice chat, and I left them with their heads tucked together, looking as if they expected to inherit the earth.' _

_But later, after we were supposed to be in bed, Artie crept downstairs for a glass of milk, and heard Paddy talking seriously to Mama, about Mr. English again. Here is what he said, this time. _

'_The last time I met Bill English I was astonished at the change in him. All the sparkle—all the life—had gone from his eyes. He was as beaten-looking as a fellow could be. He was so lost in his troubles he didn't seem to remember me at first. I shook his hand and sat down with him, and after a while he seemed to snap to his senses, and recognize me. We had lunch together, and Bill confessed he was a ruined man. His fortune—gone! His health—deteriorated! I asked him, in a roundabout way, what had happened—but Bill made no roundabout answer. "This wife of mine has bled me dry. Every penny—she has taken everything! She has stolen from me—my money, my happiness, my freedom. She is conspiring to bring me unhappiness. I am a husk of the man I was before I met her." I could hardly reconcile this picture of the charming woman I had met with the one Bill was describing, but he spoke with so much conviction that I knew he must mean what he said. A few months later, I heard the news that he had died—and I don't wonder at the cause. He was a man who had been broken by life. He simply couldn't go on.'_

_After hearing that, Artie marched straight upstairs and woke Bess and me, and we wrote to you right away. You see, if Irene English as good as killed her first husband—you can't let her marry your Uncle Shirley, and do the same to him! You simply can't, kids. We cant think of how to help you—but you have to think of something. You can't let your uncle suffer the same fate as poor Bill English._

"So you see," finished Claire in a solemn voice, "You were wrong about Irene, Sally." She's just as horrid a woman who ever lived. She a—a _murderess!_"

Sally did not trust herself to speak. Finally, she _made_ her mouth form the words. "I—I don't believe it," she said staunchly, but even as she was, her brain was telling her that she was wrong. It _must_ be true. Mr. Irving wouldn't _lie_—would he? No—no—he wouldn't!

"Maybe," Sally supposed, desperately grasping at straws. "Artie misheard. Or maybe there is some other William English, who married some other Irene. Charlottetown is a big city, you know."

"Not that big," said Gilbert, witheringly. "Wake _up_, Sally! You were wrong! And _we_ were right—and now we have to think of some way to really stop this. Irene Howard ruined her first husband, and we can't let the same fate befall Uncle Shirley."

Sally was torn right down the middle. She thought of Irene, and her smiles, and her pretty ways, her fashion-plate clothes. Had she gotten those clothes with her husband's stolen fortune? And _could_ she smile, having done such terrible things to him? Irene was rude, yes—she was abrasive—but she was also funny, and personable, in her own way. Sally did not want to believe she was…as two-faced as that. She did not want to think of Irene as a _murderer_! But—perhaps she was, and anything else was just an act. Perhaps she was just as awful as…as _this_. Uncle Shirley, like William English, was a wealthy man—maybe Irene was only marrying him because she meant to ruin him, too.

Two great tears welled up in Sally's eyes. She felt very young, and stupid. The cousins were right—she _had_ been falling for Irene, in a way. She had been completely taken in by Irene's strange charm—just as Uncle Shirley was. The tears spilled over down Sally's cheeks at the thought of her beloved uncle, ruined. Maybe even—dead! Oh, poor Uncle Shirley! Poor, _dear_ Uncle Shirley!

Sally faced the cousins with cheeks red with anger and humiliation. A new face flashed through her mind's eye—not Irene, weeping, but Uncle Shirley, broken, a _husk of a man_. "Tell me what we're going to do," Sally said, biting back a sob that threatened to choke her. How foolish she had been, to try and believe the best of someone. People were always, always letting each other down.

Sally saw that, now.


	19. Helen Sees Everything

Helen slipped out to Rainbow Valley after supper to check on her garden. The night had fallen, soft and silky, with only a rim of firelit orange where the great violet-starred dome met the horizon left behind as evidence of the day's passing. A little mistral wind came up from the Gulf and ruffled the treetops. The birds who had nested there for the night gave little sleepy peeps and settled down more firmly against it.

Grandmother and Grandfather Blythe were listening to the radio in the parlor; in the kitchen, Faith was washing dishes and singing the song that Helen loved to hear her sing. _Button up your overcoat when the wind is free. Take good care of yourself, you belong to me_! It was just how Helen thought of everybody she loved—that they mustn't ever leave her—and that they must take care of themselves, and be well, for she could not live without them. Mother had such a lovely, gold-and-silver voice—nothing like Helen Kane's shrill, squeaky one, when she sang the same song! But then—Helen thought her mother was the best at _everything_—better than anybody else in the world!

Dad's car wasn't in the driveway. During dessert a call had come from over-harbor, and so he had gone out, with his cracked black leather bag. He would not be home until late, and Helen would lie in a state of near-wakefulness until she heard the door open downstairs; Dad climbing the steps to his room. It was the sound of her childhood—Helen always lay awake and listened for her father until he got back from wherever he had been. She never could fully sleep if someone she loved was not at home as they should be. When Sally spent the night with Norma Milgrave, Helen tossed and turned _all_ night. She wondered what she would do when Sally went off to Queens in a few years. Perhaps she would never sleep again, when that happened! Or—worse yet—she would learn to get used to Sally's absence after a while, and sleep just as soundly as she used to, with her not there. The very thought that it _could_ happen made tears spring to Helen's eyes. Why did people have to grow up—and apart—and scatter?

She turned back to the garden and let it bathe her stinging eyes in its beauty. Helen loved her garden by moonlight. The dew brought out the scent of things so richly. The white moths were out, fluttering from flower to flower. A few years ago, Grandmother Blythe had written a poem called, 'Helen's Garden by Moonlight.' Helen repeated the words of her favorite stanza over now:

_For up out of the loaming,_

_A host of budded sentinels stand,_

_Ordered by careful little hands _

_To guard over the gloaming._

Aunt Una had illustrated it gorgeously with delicate little watercolors, and it hung on the wall of the room that Helen shared with Sally, so that she might see it first thing in the morning, and last when she went to bed at night. It was the pinnacle of her young life—the fact that someone had enshrined some beautiful thing made by her own hands in lyric and verse. To Helen, there was no greater honor than that.

Helen alone cultivated her flowers, but every blossoming thing in her garden had been chosen for someone she loved. Every flower was the favorite of someone in the family. The small pink tea roses had been requested by Aunt Una; the red roses had been planted for Helen's mother. The border of white violets, with purple streaks at their hearts, were picked for Grandmother Blythe, while the herbaceous border of pungent rosemary was for Grandma Meredith. Sally like sunflowers, and so Helen had planted a stand of them nearby to shade the golden narcissus blooms that Helen had grown from cuttings taken from the garden of Hester Gray, in Avonlea. Grandfather Blythe liked cherries, and so Helen was growing a little tree that might bear fruit for him in a couple of years. Poor spindly little thing it was, now—hard to believe that in ten years it would be majestic, spreading its white-lace boughs above her as she worked!

The purple asters that came up in the second week of September—weeks earlier than the other asters—had been Uncle Walter's favorites. The calceolarias turned Helen's nose a bit with their heady scent, and accosted her eyes with their bright red and yellow streaks, but Susan Baker had loved them, and Helen had loved Susan Baker, so she tended them faithfully in her memory. The gardenias looked stunning against Aunt Rilla's glossy hair; Aunt Di had written Helen an Indian legend about the ladys-slippers that had taken over one corner of the garden; Aunt Nan loved the lilies-of-the-valley, little 'fairy bells,' she called them. The cousins each had picked a different-colored pansy for themselves, and they grew in little patches, interspersed between their parent-flowers.

Helen worked for a while, cutting and pruning and weeding and tying back, and then turned her attention to the latest addition to her garden: the soft blue columbines she had planted for Aunt Irene's bouquet back in the springtime. They were coming along nicely, the deep blue starry petals caressing the soft white cluster at the center. Helen would cut the best blossoms tomorrow, and bind them together with some of the white roses, which were Helen's own favorite among her flowers—though she didn't like to pick, lest she make the other little flower-hearts beat with jealousy. Helen planned on incorporating at least one bloom from every other flower in the garden with the roses and columbines—that way, Irene's bride bouquet would represent a true coming-together of the family. The significance would be lost on Irene herself, but perhaps the others in the family would notice, and have an idea of what Helen hoped for them all. It would be a massive, fragrant, overblown masterpiece—perfect for Aunt Irene. And with true loving sentiment behind it, too.

Helen sighed. She would _so_ like to be a bride someday, herself. She could never marry somebody like Eddie Douglas, but if somebody else were ever to ask her… Joseph Milgrave, for example. Joe had inherited neither his father's slapdashedness nor his mother's wishy-washiness. He was tall for his age, with a fine tanned skin and blond curly locks. He was a very quiet boy—Helen liked that he was quiet. You could be yourself with Joe—without having to feel like you must always be talking, or singing, or laughing. They were the youngest of their families, and shared a common little loneliness between them over that. Joe was a friend—Joe was a pal. But likely it would be somebody like Eddie that Helen married in the end. Nobody else would want a shy, washed-out little mouse of a wife!

"What are you dreaming about under these new-born stars, Helen o'mine?"

Helen colored at her grandmother's question—imagine if Grandmother knew what a silly thing she was thinking of! She busied herself patting the dirt more firmly around the base of Aunt Una's roses. "Nothing, dear Grandmother, except of my garden. Uncle Shirley is going to bring me back some tropical flowers from his honeymoon in Florida. He promised to bring hibiscus and poinsettias, and something perfectly lovely-sounding called birds-of-paradise. Although I don't think they'll thrive here—even in summer it's too cool. And I hate watching my little plants die…when I have tended them so carefully!"

Anne smiled. There was something about Helen that always touched her heart—her wistfulness—her quietude. She was the fine, 'angelically good' little girl that Anne had always despaired of ever being—but she had a spirit to her, a wild tang, that kept her from being prim and starched. "My anniversary is coming up next month," Anne confessed, on a whim, "And I've asked Gilbert for a little glass house to be built just at the edge of the yard. I'd like to be able to grow vegetables in the winter-time—I wouldn't have any problem ceding a corner of my space over to you, Helen. Food for the soul is just as nourishing as food for the body—and we can have roses in January, that way! Your birds-of-paradise and poinsettias will be quite toasty warm there."

"Oh, thank you!" Helen got up and threw her muddy hands around her grandmother's neck—and Anne resolved to remember to tell Gilbert of the change in plan—those emerald earrings could wait until Christmas. Helen's joy over the greenhouse would be enough of a gift for her doting Grandmother.

Anne kissed that smooth, rosy cheek, breathing in the sweet scent of Helen's hair. "Your mother asked me to come down and retrieve you, dear one. It's getting time for you to be in bed."

"I was just finishing up here. Fifteen minutes, Grandmother?—ten?"

Anne smiled. "Twenty and I'll vouch for you. But no longer than that." She shook her head at her own silliness as she headed back for the house—there was no need to chide Helen to do a thing. She always did what she promised—she was a very good and honest little girl.

Helen quickly finished staking Sally's sunflowers—they had such a tendency to flop over, limp and dejected, if she let them be—and then she started gathering up her shears and twine to place back in her basket, which hung on a nail on the fence when she was not using it. She walked up and down the rows sprinkling the earth with her watering can. It was very dark by now, and she shivered a little, remembering Mother's story about Henry Warren's ghost, that groveled and gibbered. Cam and Sally and Walt loved that story, but Helen never liked it. _Poor_ Henry Warren! If only there was a light on at Caraway! But there wasn't, and the moon glinted on the windows so that they appeared to be the sightless eyes of a dead thing. If only someone should come along, and prove to her that she was not the _only_ person left in the world!

Sometimes in a life as soon as you wish a thing, it happens. This was one of those times for Helen. She wished for someone to come along—and somebody _did_. Through the trees she glimpsed the gauzy shape of a woman. The skin on Helen's neck prickled, and she wished she had specified that she meant someone _living_ should come—for she was afraid, for a moment, that she was seeing a ghost. But then the woman stumbled—and ghosts didn't stumble—and she put her hand to her head and Helen recognized Aunt Irene's white dress, her diaphanous cream-colored hat. She raised her hand and opened her lips to call out—and then, seeing another shadow move in the trees, clamped them suddenly shut again.

Helen stood stock still and watched. She could not keep her traitorous eyes from seeing. The woman lifted her head in its gauzy hat and her low, throaty laughter carried on the wind to Helen's ears. The shadows of the man and woman moved together—merged into one.

It was a long time before they moved apart again.


	20. All Catawampus

_I'm back—exams are done! Here is a new chapter to replace the last one I uploaded; it wasn't right to me, so I hope you will approve the change. Also, I hope it hasn't been too long since I've last updated so that you all have forgotten the plot! Anyway, thanks for sticking with me through the fallow time. -Ruby_

* * *

For a week, everything for the wedding had been going smoothly. The deliveries from town were made on the tick of the dot. The decorations looked as if they had _grown _up out of the landscape, rather than been placed there. The Ingleside kitchen was a wonderland of delicacies, food appearing as effortlessly as sanctified loaves and fishes. The guest list remained set and fixed; everyone who had been invited was coming, and nobody wanted to squeeze any extra guests along with their party.

"Why, there really isn't anything to throwing a wedding," laughed Faith Meredith, who had always wondered how she would ever manage to marry off two daughters. "It's far easier than I thought it would be. Even Cam's face is healing nicely, though he'll still be a sight at the ceremony. But everything else is just _falling_ into place!"

The gods do not like it when mortals grow over-confident in their abilities. Faith Blythe needed to be taken down a peg or two, they reasoned. So they picked at the threads holding everything together, and all at once, overnight, things began to fall apart.

The Inglesidians usually woke to the sun, but the morning before the wedding, the sun was not shining. It simply refused to come up that day. The cloud cover made it as gloomy as twilight, and a gray and dismal rain was making mud of the carefully manicured lawn. Far out over the harbour thunder pealed ominously. A restless wind had spent the night whipping the branches in the garden—now Irene's precious Chinese lanterns were tattered shreds at the end of each bough. The canopy, so carefully hung the day before, was sodden and limp and dragging in the grass.

Usually, when the summer rain sweeps over the Island, it leaves it cool and fresh, but with this rain came a great heavy curtain of sweltering heat. The air was sluggish and wet even inside the house, frizzling the curls of every she-creature within. The carefully concocted wedding cake was melting, and Faith's jellied coconut ring—requested specifically by the groom for his feast—refused to set in its pan. The coconut floated atop the gelatin, with limp maraschino cherries rolling dismally along the bottom. Finally Faith gave up and emptied the entire thing down the drain—where it finally took on its gelatinous properties inside the pipes, blocking up all the sinks in the house so that you had to run to the manse if you wanted to wash your hands.

"Oh—_no_!" cried Faith, sinking down into a kitchen chair, realizing at once what she had done. "Jem, Jem—I tempted Fate, didn't I? Oh, what _can _be done to fix things?"

"I don't know," he said gravely. "But I think—"

Before Jem could finish his thought the telephone rang. It was the House of Dreams; Aunt Rilla was so in tears they cousins could hear her from the receiver all the way across the hall. Somehow—Rilla did not know how—a tiny dab of ink had gotten onto the bodice of Irene's dress. (Here, the cousins looked at Selwyn and Amy Ford, who shook their heads, firmly. They had too much respect for their mother to fool with her handiwork, even to hurt Irene.) The stain was so small, but up against all that white, it stood out. Could it be covered, with a strategically placed rosette? Or was the entire thing ruined?

"Irene will never forgive me!" Rilla wailed. "She'll say something like I've been planning and plotting this ever since I was so _cold_ to her in the war, and do I _remember_ how she kissed poor little war-baby Jims all of his 'dear wittle face,' only trying to be nice, and how I lashed out at her? And the time—the time—" Here Aunt Rilla choked and could not go on. There were some things in her history with Irene that still rankled to speak of.

It was physiologically impossible for Faith to look on the dark side of things for too long. "A few things were bound to go wrong with this wedding, somewhere along the line. I was silly to think they wouldn't. And usually, things you don't want to happen have such a habit of catching you unawares right when there's nothing you can do about it. We've time to fix this mess and we've already had so many things go wrong already that it will be smooth sailing from here on out."

This is the moment Helen chose to come in from the garden and tell her mother that something had to be done about the flowers for the wedding. Her garden, she said, studiously avoiding looking into anybody's eyes, had been ravaged by the storm.

"Oh, blast it all!" cried Faith, her positive outlook forgotten in an instant. She ran, frizzled curls quivering, into the house to try to ring up to Una at the manse, but the Ingleside phone would not stop ringing long enough for her to get a call through.

It turned out that the storm that brought so much rain and heat with it was the tail end of a hurricane that was whisking through New England, and many of Irene's chums from Boston could not get flights or trains out to the Martimes provinces. All day the phone was ringing as this contingent wired their regrets. Faith sent the boy-cousins out to the yard to rearrange the chairs around the bedraggled altar from two columns into one. They could not have a bride and groom's side now, when the bride's would be empty!

"What will Irene say when she sees this?" wondered Dr. Blythe to his wife, when he saw those chairs.

A woman less finicky than Irene would have been brought low by such things as this. Everyone held their breath when Irene appeared that afternoon. They braced themselves for her tirade, her hysterics. But she was perfectly calm. Her hair looked a fright, but she seemed not to notice, or care. When they presented her with the sad little manse roses and the piecy hydrangea that were to replace Helen's bounty, she only smiled and gave them a little caress.

"Oh, dear," she murmured, when she learned that her only living relatives and her best friends of years would not be there to witness her nuptials. "I didn't like those lanterns, anyway," she confided, when she saw the tattered remains of them, thrown on the trash heap. "Inspired—positively inspired!" she breathed to Rilla, when she saw the new rosettes on the silk bodice of her wedding gown. She smiled absently at them all and moved off into the garden, not even noticing how the hem of her pretty chiffon dress was dragging in the mud.

The Ingleside people exchanged wary glances. Who was this tall, placid, gentle woman—and what had she done with _Irene_?

"Perhaps she's a changeling," mused Selwyn, who had, that morning, been thumbing through a battered copy of Yeats.

"I think she's rather old for that," said Gilly. And Irene overheard—old!—and said nothing!

* * *

"There you are, Helen!"

At the first sign of Irene, Helen had fled upstairs to the attic, and had remained there all afternoon. But after a while her stomach had started to growl. Only when she was tolerably sure that all the grownups were out in the garden, removing the battered Chinese lanterns from the trees, did she dare to creep downstairs to the pantry, for provisions.

But as it turns out—as it often does when one is trying to go unnoticed by someone in particular—Helen had picked just the wrong moment. At the foot of the stairs she bumped into Irene herself, who was rounding the corner to go up. She had a plate of cookies and a glass of milk in her hand; the milk sloshed over the rim of her glass and pattered her dress, but Irene didn't seem to notice.

"I was bringing you a snack, little one. I thought you must be positively _ravenous_ by now—you missed lunchtime. And I thought, too, we might have a little _tete-a-tete_. There is something in particular that I'd like to ask you, Helen. Here—take the cookies. _Have_ one! You look positively peaked—like a little rabbity _ghost_ of a thing!"

Helen could not get away. Her traitorous stomach growled at the sight of those cookies. Her fingers slipped out—she took one—and then she had no choice but to sit on the steps with Irene as she ate it. Her first bite startled her—the cookie was a monkey-face—Helen had not had a monkey-face cookie since Susan Baker had died. Mother could not manage them. She looked over at Irene, her uneasiness forgotten in a moment of wonderment.

"Where did you get these?"

Irene hugged her knees. "Shirley had a box of Susan's stuff. I tried my hand at a few of them—her jelly-roll cake I'll never be able to do—but these cookies I could. I don't make them often; they're too yummy, aren't they? I want to eat them all every time I have _one, _and if I don't watch out, soon I'll be as plump as your aunt R—um—far too large to fit into my pretty clothes, I mean. But you're such a scanty little thing it can't hurt you, Helen. Eat them all!"

Helen did, all the time hating herself a little. She was not the type of person who could be hypocritical. She wanted her outside manner to match her inside thoughts in all things. Yet here she was, sitting with Irene, _eating her cookies_, as though they were old friends—when all the time her soul was condemning her! Helen broke out in a sweat over the thought of what she had seen the night before. She could not get it out of her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, what a coward she was! But she could not bring herself to be cold and pale to Irene. Not when Irene was looking at her so nicely.

But all the same—she would not be false. With great effort, Helen put the cookie down on the plate Irene was holding. Irene looked from it to her.

"You don't want it?"

"No," said Helen. "It's very delicious but I—I—I'm not hungry after all, Irene. I'm sick—my stomach is queasy. I'm going upstairs to lie down."

She flew upstairs, her stomach rumbling, her heart a fist in her chest. Why had she lied to Irene? If her stomach was queasy it was from hunger, and now she would not even be able to have any supper. If she did, Irene would notice that she had lied, and she would be caught out. Helen would just have to go hungry all night, and find herself cured by breakfast tomorrow morning. Only—only—oh, well!

"It serves you right," Helen told herself fiercely, as she passed the hallway mirror. "You little timid unsure _coward_ of a Helen Blythe! Won't you do the right thing—ever?"


	21. The Wedding Day

Sally stood in the doorway and listened as thunder rolled ominously out over the harbor. Underneath it all, the music was starting—she heard the first strains of it over the whipping of the wind. She clutched her bouquet and made ready to step from the safety of shelter out into the gray, drizzly day: Uncle Shirley's wedding day.

How chill it was! Mother had to hold onto her hat lest the wind, increasing, should stir it from her head into the garden! The edges of the canopy lashed in the wind as Sally made her slow, measured pace toward it. At the appointed place, she stopped, and Uncle Jerry tried to hold the pages of his prayer-book flat long enough to get his place. "Dearly beloved," he began, and Sally tried to look rapturous, as a bridesmaid should, but it was so hard.

With every second the sky seemed to grow darker. The rain was increasing from a trickle into an outright downpour. There was a sound of sobs coming from the row where the cousins sat. The ceremony went on and Sally tried to ignore the cold droplets sliding down her neck into the collar of her rose gown.

All of a sudden, Uncle Jerry was looking earnestly out over the assembled onlookers, and asking: "If anyone knows of any reason why this union should not take place, let him speak now or forever hold his peace." There was a silence that went on and on. Sally held her breath. Just when she thought the moment might pass away unheeded, there was a faint cry from somewhere. "Stop—STOP! I know why!"

"Who spoke?" the murmurs came. "Who would say such a thing?"

"Sally," came the sibilant, hissing reply. "It was Sally. Sally Blythe."

Sally's heart throbbed a tango beat in her chest. She had not said it! Why had they all thought she had? She looked up at Aunt Irene. That woman's face was white, and it was not the rain that made shiny tracks on her cheeks, from eyes to chin. "No!" Sally whispered. And then gaining strength, she cried, "NO!"

_Sally, Sally, it was Sally…_

"Sally!"

Sally sat bolt upright, tangled in the sheets. Her mother was standing over the bed, watching her strangely. Her hand was cool against Sally's fevered brow. "I came to wake you—you were having a nasty dream, darling."

Sally pressed her hand to her heart as her mother threw back the garret curtains. The sun was shining—no rain, after all. What a silly dream…though it had seemed so real! With her hands Sally dragged her springy hair from her sweaty face. The other beds were empty, and from downstairs she heard the clang and clamor of pots and pans, of furniture being moved and put back together in a different configuration. Those were the sounds of thunder she had heard. Only when she had thought of that did her heart slow its frantic pace. It was morning at Ingleside. Mother was here. All was well.

But Faith's face took on the aspect of a scowl. "This is no morning for a lie-in," she told her daughter. "You have to go to Aunt Di and start getting ready, Sal. Irene is here already—I thought you were upstairs with her until Claire told me that you will still lazing away in bed."

So Claire hadn't woken her! Sally felt a prickle of annoyance at her cousin. More than a prickle! What on earth was happening to Claire, lately? Once she and Claire had seemed inseparable. Now it appeared as though they were magnets, unable to come within each other's pull.

Sally collected her dress and went downstairs to her bedroom, to let Aunt Di attend to her. Her hair was brushed and curled, her face washed, and even a little bit of rouge was pressed into her pale cheeks. "We can't have a wan, washed-out bridesmaid," Aunt Di murmured into her ear—Aunt Di, who was positively glowing in her bronze dress, the pale, sweeping hat that Sally had chosen waiting on a chair by the door.

Over by the window, Aunts Rilla and Nan were attending to Irene, who sat tall and silent, her fair hair not waved for once, but pulled simply back from her face into a low knot at the nape her neck. "You are so calm, Irene," marveled Aunt Nan, as she applied powder to the woman's white face and long, swanlike neck. There was something like admiration in her voice. "The day of my wedding to Jerry, I was a jumble of nerves."

"The day of my wedding to Ken I woke in paroxysms of tears," remembered Aunt Rilla, smiling at her old, foolish self. "The sky had the audacity to be overcast, and the temperature the daring to be cool. I was a summer bride—I wanted sun and warmth and clouds. I thought it was a terrible omen that I didn't have them. But Ken and I have been married fourteen years this month, and all the sun in the world couldn't have made a difference for us. We're strong as we are because we love each other. That's all that matters—not any of the trappings."

"Di, darling," wondered her twin slyly, as she affixed the bride's veil to her crown with more pins than were perhaps strictly necessary, "Don't you think you'll want to be getting married yourself any time soon?"

Sally felt Aunt Di stiffen next to her, and remembered that nothing inflamed Aunt Di's redheaded fury so much as when people asked her if she would _ever_ marry. But if Di _was_ feeling piqued at all, she hid it well. "Maybe one day I will," she said casually, as though Nan had only asked whether she thought she might ever get a pair of those cunning new platform shoes that were all the rage in Irene's fashion magazines.

"Well, you had better not leave it too long," said Rilla, applying a pale lipstick to Irene's lips, and holding a cloth out for her to blot against. "Or else you'll never be able to have…um…well…"

"Children," gravely finished Sally, who had the biggest ears of any of their little pitchers.

The aunts had forgotten she was there. They looked at each other and began to laugh. Except for Irene, who only turned her head on her long neck to gaze unseeingly out to the garden below.

"I have plenty of children already," said Aunt Di, her eyes growing wistful. "But I would like a wedding. To wear Mummy's beautiful veil—and have dear Dad 'give me away.' All of the trappings and trims and furbelows. But I hope when—_if_—my time comes, I'll take it as easily as Irene here. You're as docile as a kitten this morning—there's nothing fierce or ferocious about you. The first time I was a bridesmaid was for my old schoolchum, Pauline Reese, and she was overwrought the whole day long. She nearly bossed the life from mine and the other maids' bodies. How do you do it, Irene? What makes you so calm?"

Irene turned her face from the window, but again it was not like she saw the women in the room. "Well, you know," she said vaguely. "I've done this all before."

Her remark fell like a leaden lump into the silence of the little bedchamber—was it not a little charmless to mention your first wedding with your second so close upon you? Perhaps Irene was only thinking of her dead husband—happy times they had had, or the promise of her first wedding day. Or perhaps, Sally thought, swallowing against a lump and remembering the letter from the Goldens, she was thinking of how ill she had used poor Bill English! Irene pushed Rilla's hand gently away and stood, her dress a column of pure ivory. "I'm finished now," she pronounced.

They went downstairs, where Persis Ford was waiting with her camera. They had a portrait session in the garden, the wedding party—sans Uncle Shirley, per tradition—posed against the peony bed, the rose trellis, the creeping wisteria. When the pictures were developed they would find Irene's face so haunted and elfin in each one—a little blank, even. It was not until she caught sight of the band of men coming down from Caraway House that the first flushes of pink touched her face, her lips curving softly in a small smile. She had been lovely before, in her finery—but when she smiled that secret smile Sally thought Irene the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.

"It's time, dear," said Grandmother Blythe, taking Irene's arm, her grey eyes starry with feeling. "Let's go inside and let your groom take his places."

The garden filled up with guests, and the musicians began playing from their place under the trees. Sally let herself be pushed into place, to await her entrance. First would go Uncle Jerry, in his ministerial garb, and then Rachel Elliott, from Upper Glen, who had been solicited to sing the bridal air in place of Irene's soloist friend from Boston. Then Sally would march out, and behind her would come Irene on Grandfather Blythe's arm. The little bridesmaid's thoughts began whirling and tilting, her stomach a twist of nervousness, and had not Aunt Di tapped Sally's arm, she might have never moved, standing there in the door until the end of time.

She stepped out into the sun, and made her way down the steps into the garden, through the rows of chairs. Faces flashed out at her: her proud parents, her beaming Grandmother and Grandfather Meredith. There was a horrid moment when Sally passed the place where the cousins were sitting; it was like moving through a wall of coldness. But she survived it. She took her place beneath the canopy and watched as Irene swept down from the house on the arm of her father-in-law-to-be. There was a hush, as Rachel Elliott began to sing.

Nobody—not even the cousins—could deny that Irene was a beautiful, beautiful bride.

Sally stole a glance up at her Uncle Shirley, and her heart melted at the rush of love—of wonder—of _promise_ in his eyes. He took Irene's slim hand when she approached. A look passed between them and Sally felt her own eyes fill with inexplicable tears. Could it possible that she would ever stand, thus, with someone—and look at him like that? Could another person so completely hold the chances of her happiness? She did not think so, and yet—she _wanted_ that! Oh, in that moment, how all of Sally's fears about Irene fled away from her! Perhaps Irene was not perfect—but then, nobody was. She and Uncle Shirley had all the rest of time to learn to love one another, getting better and better at it with each week, year, day, hour of their lives.

Uncle Jerry began the service. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the joining of Shirley John Blythe and Irene Howard English in holy matrimony. Today we shall share with them one of life's greatest moments, giving recognition to the worth and beauty of love, adding our best wishes to the words which shall unite them forever in the eyes of God."

Sally thrilled to the tips of her toes, and thought that Uncle Jerry certainly could make a lovely prayer. Now Aunt Di would stand up to read from First Corinthians—Sally had heard her practicing it earlier in her best schoolma'arm voice. How she loved the old passage about love and all its wonderful qualities! She could hardly wait to hear it now, with such an example of love's patient kindness all around her.

But Uncle Jerry was not finished. He went on, with that fateful phrase, the one Sally had forgotten:

"Should there be anyone who has cause why this couple should not be united in marriage, they must speak now or forever hold their peace."

All at once, Sally's horrible dream came back to her with a vengeance. She shook—she strangled her poor bouquet—she waited, body tensed, for it to come. And then, like a distant bell, it did! A voice crying out from the wilderness of the garden: just as it had happened in her dream.

"Stop—_stop_—STOP the wedding!"


	22. What Helen Saw

The smell of dead flowers was in the air. Helen Blythe wrinkled her nose and tried to turn her head away from the smell, but it was everywhere. She fidgeted in her seat as the musicians played the wedding march. Here came Sally, in her pink dress, looking pretty as a picture—here came Irene in her white—it wasn't until they had reached the canopy that Helen saw with horror they were carrying white roses edged with the darkest rot. Decaying blossoms were everywhere, scattered over everything. The smell made Helen gag.

She wanted to rise from her seat, to cry out that she could not bear it. The smell was the worst in the world for her. Her stomach turned over and over, but she could not run. She was rooted to her chair, there was no way to get away from it! Everyone was behaving as though nothing was wrong, Uncle Jerry was even _smiling_ as he pronounced the first words of the wedding rite. Did no one notice it? Irene English was staring up at her groom. In just a few moments, they would be bound together forever. Something must happen! Oh, here was Uncle Jerry saying those words—"In the eyes of God and all of us, I now pronounce you husband and wife!" Irene tilted her chin up for her kiss, and Uncle Shirley turned slightly so that Helen could see his face for the first time. A shock of terror went over her. _He wasn't Uncle Shirley_! He was—he was—!

A piercing howl rent the air, and Helen sat straight up in bed, her covers tangled round her like a shroud.

"Sunshine!" Claire Meredith was wailing from the windowseat. She turned away from the window in disgust. "Sunshine for Irene English on her wedding day! Doesn't God _know _that Irene doesn't deserve such a nice day?"

Helen disentangled herself from her sheets, and went to kneel down on the window seat that Claire had just vacated. She peered blearily out into the sunny, summertime world. Usually a clear blue cloudless sky like this lifted her spirits, but today, for once, she would have preferred the rain. Her heart twisted when she thought of the sun beating down on her ravaged garden. Usually the blossoms would be basking in the warmth, but not this morning. For no blossoms remained!

The few flowers spared by the storm, Helen had carefully cut yesterday, and tied together. They would have made an ample bride's bouquet, but her feet had carried her away from the garden, and down to the Methodist graveyard. She had laid the flowers on old Hezekiah Pollock's tombstone—so old and weathered that the letters were fading away, now. If Mr. Pollock had had any people during his life, he did not in death. There was never another offering there on his slab. Helen thought that she would much rather prefer him to have her flowers than Irene—Irene who had—who had—!

She could not even think it, even now. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and shook.

Claire was watching Sally sleep; she appeared to be having the dickens of a dream, tossing on her pillow, her red hair dark with sweat. "Should we wake her?" Amy wanted to know. Claire shook her head. A devilish gleam came into her eye; she rummaged in the night table for a thick black wax crayon and brandished it aloft. "I think Sally will look picture-perfect today with a Groucho Marx moustache, don't you?" She grinned and reached out—and Walt's hand came down to grasp it at the final moment.

"Stop," he said, harshly, as Claire blinked at his rough treatment. "What are you _doing_, Claire?"

Claire's brown eyes filled with anger, but Walt snatched the crayon away. "We're not mad at Sally. We're not even mad at Irene! We're trying to protect Uncle Shirley, is all, and fighting amongst ourselves won't do that."

But now Gilly's hazel eyes had fired to match his cousin. "You think you can boss us because you're the oldest, Walter Blythe! Claire has a mind of her own—she can do what she wants. And Sally _is _a turncoat—she's going to be Irene's bridesmaid today! I can't think of a better way for one of us to send the message that we're fine with this wedding, when we aren't."

Walt put the crayon in the pocket of his pajama pants and bit his lip for a moment. "It's too late to do anything to stop this," he murmured. "But there are ways we can show how we feel without hurting anybody. We'll dress in black, today—as if we were going to a funeral, not a wedding. We'll be dark and shabby and—and in _mourning_. In mourning for our old way of life, and Uncle Shirley's hopes!"

"What will be the good of that?" practical Selwyn wanted to know. "They'll still be married, anyway."

"It will be a symbol," said Claire, her eyes thrilling, her imagination caught by the romance of the gesture. "We _have_ to let it go on, but we won't be resigned to it! I'll wear the dull grey dress I wore to Mrs. Frederick Stirling's funeral last year. It's too small for me, now, and Mother wanted it for the poor box, but I wouldn't let her have it. I thought it might be good for dress up. I'll wear it with the Spanish mantilla that Auntie Persis brought for me last year, to wear in the school pageant as Catherine of Aragon."

"We boys will pin black swatches to our lapels," Walt suggested. "Helen, you can wear your navy wool—it's so faded, it will pass for black in a pinch. Amy, you only have your white dress, but you can thread black ribbon through the lace at the collar and pull your hair back severely, and that will make enough of a statement to matter."

A short time later, the cousins were dressed, and surveying each other in a grimly triumphant mood. They would let their feelings be known, but, as Claire put it, 

"I _wish _there was some way—some last-ditch way—that we could stop this thing for once and good."

Helen was sweating in her navy dress. The wool clung to her arms and back and her face bloomed with color. She alone could give Claire the information to do just as she wanted—and yet, she could not speak it. She was _too_ cowardly! Whenever she thought of what she had seen, in Rainbow Valley, she went cold and she _wanted_ to speak, but couldn't ever quite get the words to come. Suppose she was wrong?

Or suppose she was right, and everyone got mad at her anyway? Helen remembered a time two years ago when, trying to be helpful, she had told Aunt Rilla that her dress strained open a little at the buttons in the back. Her pretty, plump aunt did not like to look unbecoming, and Helen had thought she was being helpful. But Aunt Rilla's face had been flushed with embarrassment as she thanked Helen stiffly. She went upstairs and changed, and when she came back down she did not eat any supper, save for a few crisp lettuce leafs from the garden.

It was hard to tell, sometimes, what was the right thing to do. Wasn't it better, then, to do nothing, if you were unsure?

Helen shook her head. It was no use trying to justify it away. She was a coward, pure and simple—a _chicken_, Cam would have said, making clucking noises and flapping his arms.

Claire adjusted the black veil that fell to the sides of her pretty, heart-shaped face, and smiled with satisfaction. "We'll have to stay out of the grown-up's way," she said, as they traipsed downstairs for breakfast. "Or else they'll send us back up to change for sure."

But Claire had underestimated the fervor that greeted them downstairs. There was no time for anybody to notice the children, with all the last minute preparations going on. The cousins ate their flapjacks with a subdued, anticlimactic air, and Helen saw that they had, deep down, _wanted_ the adults to notice.

"Oh well," said Claire, scraping her plate into the sink.

The hours of the morning seemed to race away, and before they knew it, the drive was filling with cars, and they were being ushered into the garden to take their seats. Grandmother Blythe approached the throng of little people clustered on the lawn and watched them slantwise out of laughing gray eyes. In seventy years of living, Anne Blythe had learned to plumb the depths of a person's soul in one glance, but she did not need to plumb anything to see how her little, usually-sunshiney boys and girls felt on this day of days. She laid her hand on wee, white Helen's shoulder. "It's time to take our places, dear ones."

Claire Meredith cast her grandmother a desperate look. "Is it really—already?"

"It is indeed," said Grandmother gravely.

She wended off, on her son's arm, and the children stayed in their place a moment longer. "We failed utterly," said Walter in a low tone to his cousin-chums. His hazel eyes were dejected, as were those of his peers. Never before in their lives had the children of Ingleside ever not gotten something they wanted very badly. They had lived charmed lives. Failure was not an easy cross for them to bear. Claire seemed close to tears. Avery Meredith took his glasses off and busied himself in the cleaning of the lenses. Selwyn Ford's lip trembled, and Gilly made a fist, which he punched into the palm of his other hand, in a Cam-like gesture.

Only Cam himself seemed unperturbed as he ambled up, presentable enough in his dark suit—except for his bruised face. "'The best laid plans of mice and men,'" he quoth, with a knowing air. Cam never liked poetry—unless he could use it to make a point.

Walter, who loved Burns, and hated to see him used for base purposes, shot his brother a churlish look. "Shut up," he said, employing that rough phrase for the first time in his life.

Amy Ford suddenly clasped her hands together and lisped a prayer. "Dear Lord, if _anything_ can be done, won't you pleath _do_ it?"

Helen trembled. She was not God—oh, she was only a mere mortal!—but how she might answer Amy's prayer! Grandfather Meredith always said that God worked through man—man was God's instrument. Suppose this was a sign that God _wanted_ her to speak, to tell what she knew? She held her little white star-like hands out—she opened her mouth—

But here came Uncle Shirley down from Caraway House with Uncle Carl, his best man, at his side. The musicians under the trees began to play. Helen had lost her chance.

The cousins scrambled for their seats just as Rachel Elliott began to sing. 'Roses of Picardy,' a song Uncle Shirley had loved in the war. The

And the years fly on forever  
Til the shadows veil their sighs  
But he loves to hold her little hand  
And look in her sea blue eyes.  
And he sees the rose by the poplars  
Where they met in the bygone years  
For the first little song of the roses  
Is the last little song she hears

Helen began to feel very cold. Why had Uncle Shirley chosen this song? Irene's eyes weren't blue—they were a dark, inscrutable brown. And the part about the shadows veiling their sighs—for the first time ever, Helen had the idea that those she loved might not always be here with her. One day they would go away—and in the meantime, she must love them, love them, LOVE them. Didn't love sometimes mean doing what was not easy—but what was right? She couldn't let Uncle Shirley make a mistake. She _couldn't_! And she—she wouldn't!

It took Helen a long time to gather her courage. She trembled, and felt it stir within her. She felt it spreading through her, blazing through her, until her pale eyes were grey with fervor. Her stomach—her empty stomach, for she had had neither supper nor breakfast—roiled like a rocky boat on a turbulent sea, and her head swam dizzily. But she conquered it. She conquered all!

She waited for Uncle Jerry to get to the right place, and when he did, she stood.

"Stop!" she cried, surprised at how bright and loud her voice sounded—almost like Sally's, or mother's, in its confidence. "Stop—STOP the wedding!"

All heads turned toward her, and Helen felt her confidence ooze away. Grandmother looked concerned. Mother looked horrified. The cousins looked shocked, and when Helen lifted her eyes to Uncle Shirley, she saw that he looked as disappointed as a man could feel. Disappointed—in her! Helen felt a feeling of despair as she had never felt before—but she had spoken, and she must go on. She must hold on, and pay no mind to the world twirling crazily around her. She must say what she had started. She must do her duty by those she loved, no matter the consequences to herself.

"I saw Irene English kissing Uncle Carl in Rainbow Valley!" Helen cried out, in a voice that broke with emotion. And then, having said her piece, she slumped neatly and quietly to the ground, unconscious.


	23. All is Revealed

For a long moment everything was silent and still. Only Jem Blythe dared to break the spell. He leapt up, and bounded to the place where his youngest daughter lay, unmoving on the grass. He crouched by her, and cradled the bloodless face in his hands. He slapped her wrists. He turned to shout at his eldest son,

"Water, Walt—cool as you can get it. Bring a cloth, too, and my bag from the study. Faith—Faith!"

Faith Meredith knelt by her husband, tears streaming down her face. "She looks so white and—and—still," she gasped. "Oh, Jem—is she all right? Will she be all right?"

His wife's tears steadied Jem, plunged him out of his first fright into his usual, cool businesslike manner. When Helen had fallen he had had a moment of pure agony, in which he realized that despite the fact that his youngest child's meek delicacy befuddled him, she was dearest to him because of it. He could not bear it if anything happened to her—his baby—his last little girl! But Jem could deal with fearful mothers. He picked up his child in his arms, and tried not to notice her head hanging limply back against his arm. Dead weight, they had said in the war, when they had held fallen comrades like this, helping them to safety.

He would not think of that. "She has had a great shock, but she will be all right," he said shortly, and he took Helen into the house, and worked for a very long time to bring her back to consciousness.

An hour later, he came downstairs to throng of worried people in the parlor. Some of the fear had been lifted from his face. "Helen is awake and talking," he told his wife. "She is sitting up in bed. Mother is feeding her a cup of broth—she hasn't eaten a thing in almost twenty-four hours. Between bites, she managed to tell me everything."

"Oh, thank God," said Faith passionately.

Jem surveyed the group. His sisters—his wife—his children, nieces and nephews. His brother, who stood with his back to the window, still in his dark wedding suit. Where had Irene gotten to?

"Helen stands by what she said," he told them. "She says she saw Irene and Carl in—in—an embrace, night before last, when she was working in her garden."

For the first time since his vows had been interrupted, Shirley spoke. "It isn't true," he said, still watching out the window at the remnants of his ruined wedding.

"I've never known Helen to lie," said Jem, not contrarily, but matter-of-factly.

"It—it _isn't_ true," repeated Di Blythe in a shaky voice from where she sat, on the piano bench. Carl Meredith had his arm around her slim shoulders—for the first time, everyone seemed to notice that arm, and to recall that they had seen the pair in similar seating arrangements many times over the past week. Di turned her gray-green eyes to Carl's dark blue ones. They had a wordless conversation in a moment's space, and then Di quirked up her lips in a bare smile.

"It wasn't Irene who was kissing Carl—it was I. I was wearing my new cream hat," Di touched its brim, where it lay on her lap, "And Helen hadn't seen it yet, but Irene has one much like it. She made a mistake, is all. A terrible mistake."

"But _why_ were you kissing Carl?" wondered Nan, astonishedly, of her twin.

Carl dropped his arm, and took Diana's hand in his. "Because we're going to be married," he said, as merrily as he could. "The cat's scratching at the bag, Di—we might as well let it out. We were engaged one month ago, but we didn't want to steal Shirley's thunder. We planned on announcing it after the wedding was…" Carl let his voice trail off. Even he did not know how to deal with the fact of a wedding that was supposed to be, but wasn't, in the end.

"We're sorry," said Di, tremulously, to fill the space. "I never was any good at sneaking around, and now, Shirley, we've ruined things though we so much meant not to."

Shirley turned from the window. The cousins peered at him anxiously. They expected him to be angry—or on the other hand, relieved. But his face did not show any emotion at all. He looked blank—like a man who has been stripped of his feeling.

"Don't be sorry, Di," he said, woodenly. "If it hadn't been this, it would have been something else. SOMETHINGwould have come up, to get you all rid of Irene. You—all of you—have been against her from the very beginning. You never gave her a chance—not a real one. Two nights ago—when Helen saw what she thought she saw—Irene was with me, at Caraway House, where she told me that she would let me go, if I wanted it. She said she would not make me honor my promise to marry her, because anybody could see that she was not worthy of me."

From the settee, Aunt Rilla gave an exasperated sigh. "Honestly, Shirley," she said, shaking her head. "That is just like Irene to put on the poor-pity-me act! Of course she didn't _mean_ it—she only wanted to hear you say you didn't."

Shirley peered intently at his younger sister. "When will you stop thinking of Irene as the girl you knew in your childhood, Rilla? I know she hurt you terribly, then—but it was a long time ago. Since then you have learned many things—you have grown and changed as a person. So has Irene. She has learned to be a better friend—because she learned life without friends is unbearably lonely.

"Irene has spoken very little to you about life with her first husband. I think she wanted not to burden you with her sadness, but I will tell you the whole story. Bill English was very much in love with Irene Howard when they married; a year later, he began behaving erratically, and speaking of her in a very different way." Here the cousins breathed inward as one, recalling Harry Golden's letter, that recounted the story they had heard from Paul Irving. "Bill began to accuse Irene of stealing from him, of ruining his business. He became paranoid, and even violent toward her. He was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder, and his conditioned worsened. He died railing at everyone around him, most of all his wife—who stuck by his side through everything."

The Ingleside people stared at each other in shock. "It—CAN'T—be," said Nan, and laughed, horribly—because if she hadn't, she would have wept.

"It is true," said Jem, softly. "I believe I know what was wrong with Mr. English, Shirley. Dr. George Huntington, a doctor and researcher in the States, has written extensively on a similar condition. In the span of a few weeks, a fellow can go from being happy-go-lucky as anything to the meanest, blackest fellow on earth. Jerky, involuntary movements—follow—chorea—and then memory deficit and loss of muscular coordination occurs. And after that, death."

From the floor by the sofa, where the cousins were huddled, came a muffled sob, that grew louder and louder. Claire was crying—Claire!—the edges of the black mantilla around her face wet with tears. It slipped from her head entirely as she stood, and ran to her mother, burying her face in her lap.

"I—hated—Irene—Mother—because I didn't—_know_! We thought she was only—mean—and cold—and that she would—ruin—Uncle Shirley's life! We were only trying to—_protect_—him! That's why we were mean to Irene—why we made things so difficult for her! Oh, Mother—Mother—I'm sorry, _we're _sorry! We only didn't know—we mistook her sadness for—for—for something _else_!"

Aunt Nan stroked her daughter's shining hair for a long, quiet time. "That makes sense of your actions, Claire," she said finally, "But I don't know if we grownups have any such excuse. I don't believe we were thinking of Uncle Shirley at all. Our hearts were too small to let Irene in—we didn't believe she was our kind of person, and so we closed our circle to her, and she couldn't get in."

"'No man is an island entire of itself,'" quoted Uncle Jerry in a low tone. "But that is what we tried to make of Irene. Yes—even I—the infallible minister—was not quite sure of her." He took his wife's hand and smiled gently at her. "We are sinners, all."

Anne Blythe had come downstairs and caught the tail end of the conversation. "I've tried to teach you children about 'kindred spirits' and to look out for 'the race that knows Joseph,'" she said, her grey eyes pained as she crossed to her youngest son, and put her arm around him. "But I wonder if I wasn't really teaching you to mimic my special brand of snobbishness, instead. Shirley—do you think Irene will give us a second chance, to make up for our cold treatment of her? She is a lovely girl, and we would like to show her that we know that of her."

Shirley shook his head. "While the rest of you were attending to Helen, Father drove Irene home to her mother's house. She sent him back with this." He opened his hand to show a small gold circlet in his palm—Irene's engagement ring.

Now Sally felt a sob choke her. "Uncle Shirley!" she cried, throwing her arms about his waist. "Uncle Shirley, won't you let us talk to her? Won't you let us? I believe we can change her mind. And I know you love her now—and she you! She was willing to let you go, despite her own happiness, because she thought she wasn't right. Won't you let us show her that she _is_?"

Sally waited, breath bated, for her uncle to respond. Suppose he was so angry with her that he would never touch her—_look_ at her—again? For a moment her heart was hurting at the idea—then Uncle Shirley's hand came, softly, against her hair.

"I don't think you can change her mind, Josephine," he murmured.

But Sally tightened her grip and closed her eyes, her mind made up. He had not said they couldn't _try_.


	24. Reaching Out to a Friend

Everyone scattered after that. Aunt Rilla and Uncle Kenneth went back to the House of Dreams, taking the twins with them. Claire went, still teary-eyed, with her mother, to the manse. Uncle Carl and Aunt Di made themselves scarce. Cam shook his head, collected his fishing pole, and disappeared. Uncle Shirley went home to Caraway House, alone, walking through the garden, where Jem and Jerry were taking down the wedding decorations.

Sally went to her own bedroom and got out her journal, and tried to write. But the words would not come. She threw down her pen in disgust, and stared out the window for a while. The house was silent enough for her to hear the clock ticking in the downstairs hallway. It chimed the quarter-hour, and was still again.

She thought she might write about the stillness in the house. Compared to the bustle of days before, the silence was not restful, but numblike. Sally missed the excited chattering. She missed—well, she missed the note of _colour_ that Irene brought to the place. Whirling in and out in her bright satins—the trilling notes of her pretty, birdlike voice. The heady, faint scent of her perfume still lingered in some rooms—but that could just be Sally's imagination. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. The same imagination had let things spin so wildly out of control, hadn't it?

For the first time, she cursed the vivid pictures that flowed through her mind.

Because now all she could see was Uncle Shirley's grim face grimmer, his shoulders stooped. She pictured them stooping more and more over the years. His hair silvering—his body aging—and he would be alone. He would once again turn to Sally for their old companionship. She could have as much of her uncle as she wanted, now—but the thought, for once, was not comforting.

For Sally was starting to know what it was to be lonely.

The splintering of the little group of cousins over the past few days might one day be healed, but the cracks would always be there. She could not forgot how she had been outcast from her happy little group. Oh, her friends were still her _friends_—but at the same time, they were all changing. Even Sally was.

Sally bit her lip against the tears that welled in her eyes as she thought of her cousin Claire. For their whole lives the cousins had been inseparable, the very best of friends. Their hearts had reached out to one another across the miles, so it did not matter that they saw each other so infrequently. But Claire was not the same girl she had always been. Sally could not help but remember Claire's delight in tormenting Irene, in plotting against her. Her crocodile tears of guilt of the past day could not erase those memories. What was it Grandmother had said about Claire, last Christmastime, the last time they had been together? In a smiling, rueful tone she had remarked, 'Our Claire is beautiful and intelligent and loveable—and she has, perhaps, too much knowledge of those facts.' Even before Irene there had been things in Claire's letters that had distanced her from Sally—catty remarks about other girls, frivolous mentions of this-or-that boy in her class, and her proud notice of _his_ notice of her. They were little fissures that had widened into chasms. Claire was changing. _Had_ changed.

What changes did _she_ see, in Sally? In what ways was Sally becoming a stranger to herself, without her notice?

For a moment she felt a beat of panic. No—no—things must stay the same! She could not be left friendless in this wide world! Sally was not in any danger of that really happening, but she felt suddenly lonely enough to cry. She wanted badly to reach out to someone who would love her—someone who did not know of her abominable behavior of the past few weeks.

Under her elbow came the crackling of paper, and she looked down to see Harry Golden's letter in its envelope. She clung to it, a lifeline of friendliness, and thought about the Goldens. Dear Bess. There had been something there, between the girls, that had used to be between Claire and Sally. Only Bess did not have to love Sally as her blood kin. She loved her just _because_.

Sally ran downstairs to the telephone closet in the hallway. It did not take long to ring the operator, and ask for the long distance line. From there Sally gave the number—Middle Grafton R1-21—and waited as the line was rung. One long bell—two short—one long—and there was a boy's voice saying, "Echo Lodge on the line. Who's speaking?"

"This is Sally Blythe of Ingleside," said Sally. "Is—oh—is Bess there?"

"She's not, Sally of Ingleside. Mother and Paddy took the wee ones on a day trip to Andrews Cove, to visit the Rock People."

"Didn't you want to go, Harry?"

There was a smile in his voice. "I did—badly—but I had to stay behind to study. I'm preparing for my entrance examinations to Boston Latin, you know—they go off next month. If I don't fill my head with enough facts I'll fail—and Mother and Paddy won't mind, but I'll have disappointed myself."

"Well," said Sally, through her silent tears. "I should let you go, Harry. You need to study."

But perhaps her tears were not so silent. "I was just about to take a break," said Harry Golden. "I was getting a little tired of the sound of my own voice, and all the declensions and formulas were bogging me down. You sound like you could use an ear. Suppose _you_ talk, and I listen? How did the wedding at Ingleside go off yesterday?"

"It didn't," Sally said, and then she told him all about it.

Harry listened. Sally felt she could see him, sitting in the pose of _The Thinker_, which Grandfather and Grandmother Blythe had seen in Paris on their last trip abroad. She imagined his chestnut curls falling into his face, his squarish chin supported by his hand. She knew he must be nodding his head at certain of her phrases, though she could not see him, and really know. He was silent through her tale, but all the while Sally felt his comforting presence coming down the line. And she was not alone.

"I don't know how to set things right," Sally finished, finally, "Though I do so want to, Harry. But I'm just a child—sometimes I forget—and what can a little girl do in the face of something like this?"

She could hear the smile in his voice again. He did not patronize her by saying she was far more grown up that she thought—Sally would not have liked him if he had. "Even a child can show feeling," Harry told her, simply. "Love—truth—and sincere apology are not reserved to grownups, you know. You must find a way to tell Irene the way you feel in a way so that she knows you mean it. That's the hard part—getting what's in your heart out into the open."

"I've practiced a little speech dozens of times," Sally confided to him. "But _it_ isn't right."

"No—if you were Bess, you could do it—her gift is speaking, and making people know that she believes what she says. But your talent is something different, isn't it, Sally?"

Just then the closet door flew open and Sally beheld her father, his auburn hair bristling with indignation. "Tying up the private line!" he said, in a growly voice—the private line was reserved for patients only, and needed to remain free for Jem in case of emergency, and using it was verboten among the Ingleside children.

"I've only been on for eight minutes by the clock!" cried Sally, indignant herself, covering the mouthpiece. "And I needed the long distance, Dad!"

"Eight minutes on the long distance!" moaned Jem. "Sally, that's you're dowry, right there!"

"It's only a dime a minute! And I'll pay you back from my egg money! Just let me explain and say goodbye and I'll be off."

Harry was laughing when she went back to him. He had heard everything. "I'll ring off," he laughed. "And Sally—I don't doubt that you can do what you need to do. You have love in you—lots of it—Bess, Artie and I could tell at first glance. You're a loveable little person."

"And so are all of you," said Sally, feeling a rush of feeling. She was not alone in the world, after all. "I love Bess, and I love Artie—and I love you, too, Harry, already. Is that strange?"

"No," he said certainly. "It's not. Somehow our hearts just _know _each other, and always have. Goodbye now, Sally—call again if you can—or write, to let us know how it turns out."

Jem was still standing, waiting for her to free the line. But now his face was chagrined, even sorrowful. "Sally, Sally-Cecilia," he groaned. "Did I just hear you say you loved a boy—brazenly—my little, little girl?"

"Don't be silly, Daddy," she told him. "It's only Harry Golden. And besides, there are all sorts of way of loving in the world—and I didn't mean _that_ one. I'm still your little girl yet."

She gave her father a rapturous kiss and flew upstairs, her heart light as though it was winged. Because something Harry said was taking shape in her mind, and she had an idea now, of how to tell Irene how sorry they all were…and how much she was wanted—_needed_—among them.


	25. A Confession

The cousins stood in the drive and looked up at the house where Irene Howard English had lived with her mother for the past year. Their parents remembered it as a rather pretentious abode, but now the boys and girls who saw it only though it looked a little sad and shabby. The paint on the white scrollwork round the eaves was flaking and the panes of a few bay windows were bubbling down toward the bottom. The roof was mossy and sagged in places. Sally realized for the first time that Irene must be—well—she must be rather poor. Her pretty clothes were all that remained of her old life with her affluent first husband. And yet Irene had never mentioned it! Her pride would not allow her to, and so she put a brave face on it all.

The cousins had their second shock when Irene opened the door for them. She was dressed in a faded gingham dress, such as the type that Beulah Crawford wore when she came to the house to clean every other week. Her hair hung loose and golden-curly around her shoulders, and her face was free of all traces of makeup.

She let the children in without seeming to notice them, and then disappeared into the kitchen, with a murmur about refreshments, so they were free to stare at the bare furnishings without fear of being rude. There was a threadbare sofa and matching loveseat, of the same wear, the worn places hidden with old fashioned anti-macassars. But the drapes were clean and pretty and cheerful, if obviously homemade, and the piano that stood in the corner was burnished to a lovely gloss, sheet music on the stand, and a bowl of silvery blue hydrangea placed lovingly on top of the case. This was obviously where Irene spend most of her time. Claire Meredith shuffled nosily through the music, finding many songs of the first war years—the time when Irene was a girl their own age. _Keep the Homefires Burning, Till We Meet Again, Someday Sweetheart. _Songs of love and longing, and Sally felt her throat constrict with sadness for the pretty woman who sat and sang those songs. She was willing to bet that Irene had not sang much at all in the past two days.

Irene came in with a pitcher of lemonade and a tray of glasses and Claire pulled her hand away from the music as though she'd been caught with it in a cookie jar. Irene sat, spreading her skirt around her trim legs as she did. There was no doubt that she had style—Irene in gingham print was the same as any other woman in silk chiffon.

"It was nice of you to come and check up on me," she said, mechanically, and a little dully. "But there is really no need. I—know—you want to apologize for what you think you've done to wrong me. But you needn't. Things only didn't work out, is all, and Shirley will be better off without me. And—I with him. Oil and water, you know."

She tried to laugh, and the children did not know what to do about it. They shuffled their feet uncomfortably. Only Cam placed his big paw over Irene's small one.

"You don't mean that," he said, gently. "You put on a brave face, but you don't really feel it."

For the first time a ghost of a smile touched Irene's lips. "My father used to say I'd never win any prizes for acting. I never was good at pretending. It got me in trouble in the old days. I said what was on my mind baldly and bluntly, and more often than not it came out wrong. The only time I could hold myself back was when I was playing the coquette. The boys liked me for it—the girls didn't. And I was stupid enough to think that if I had boy-friends I wouldn't need the girls. Once I realized my mistake it scared me—and I tried to go back, and be familiar and friendly with the girls I'd slighted. But there is such a thing as being _overly-_familiar—and nobody liked that, much."

Irene dropped her gaze to her hands, clasped in her lap. The sight of those long, bare fingers—the absence of Uncle Shirley's ring—made them seem strange, and foreign, even to her. She wound them about her knees, and moved her gaze away.

"How is Shirley?" she asked softly, and the Blythe boys and girls saw that all walls between them—barriers of age, situation, and acquaintance—had fallen away. They could talk honestly with Irene, and she with them. But nobody knew just what to say to fill the silence that followed.

"He is brokenhearted," said Helen, softly, venturing forward timidly toward Irene. Her face was burning at the thought of the part she had played in their undoing. The whole story had been explained to her, and her mistake, and Helen had wept for many long hours over it. The tears showed plainly in her face, still—her eyes were pink, her nose was pink, and she looked more like a frightened rabbit than ever as she edged toward the woman she had once called 'aunt.' Suppose Irene should—yell—at her? But Irene only caught Helen's thin little hand, and held it briefly to her lips. Her brown eyes flashed love—real love, for the first time—and dawn broke over Helen's face. It was a kind thing for Irene to do—to relieve the tender little heart of some of its burden of suffering.

"I suppose you darlings have come to ask me to go back to him?" she wondered, of the rest, still holding Helen's hand. "You needn't bother. There are some people in the world who—who—who just don't mix. I always had a feeling that Shirley might be too good to be true."

"He isn't!" cried Claire, her latent temper flaring. "He's just as good as he seems!"

"I didn't mean it in a bad way," said Irene understandingly. "Not as you hear in the pictures, of a man _pretending_ to be better than he is. I meant that he is too good to be…for me."

Sally knew the time was upon her. She stood. "Aunt Irene," she said, and for the first time the words came easily and naturally to her lips. "The reason we came today is to read you the latest chapter in my epic. I worked so hard on it—won't you hear it out?"

"Certainly," said Irene, nicely, but a little vaguely, as though she were slipping a little away from him. Sally squared her shoulders and thought that she must bring her back. Well—if Harry Golden was right—and if Sally had one ounce of the writer in her soul at all—she would be able to do it! Was she good enough? Her heart beat in her throat as she formed the words aloud.

"The title is 'A Confession,' Sally read out, giving the signal to Amy and Selwyn Ford, who sidled to the door and slipped out of it. She cleared her throat and began.

_Once upon a time, there was a very handsome man. Some people might think that he was handsome because he was their son, or brother, and they loved him. Some people also might think he was good and kind, and everybody knows that handsome is as handsome does. _

_This man was handsome inside and out, and his name was Shirley Blythe. He was a flying ace of the Great War. After the war he returned home and started the Four Winds Flight School and was celebrated all over the island for training some of the best pilots in the country. Shirley Blythe also ran pleasure tours, and for a small fee he took people up to see the red roads and the neat fields of Prince Edward Island by the air. He was very successful and he grew to be very rich, buying for himself the old Bailey house near Rainbow Valley, and renovating it to suit his bachelor tastes exactly. He filled it with all sorts of modern furniture, and built a garage for the all the cars he liked to drive, too fast, some said, around the Glen. The house had come with a pantry, but it was always empty, because Shirley never learned to cook. Susan Baker made supper for him every night, and sent one of the children up through Rainbow Valley to deliver it. When Susan died, everybody said that Shirley would have to get a wife—or else starve._

_Shirley had vowed never to marry, but all the same, he did not starve. He bought a cookbook, and worked his way through the first few chapters, learning to make fish and the kind of stew that old Norman Douglas would have called 'macanacaddy.' But then, before he could move on to roasts, Shirley Blythe met a woman._

_She was one of the tourists whom he took up in his plane; she was from the Island but had been away from it for a long while, and she wanted a glimpse of the place she had loved so much as a girl. Shirley thought she looked very pretty—and she was, inside and out. As they were up in the air, he smiled at all of her oohs and ahs. When they were back on firm ground, he made a point to stop and ask her how she had liked the experience. "Oh, I loved it, Shirley," she said, familiarly, and he was puzzled, for he had not thought he knew her. The thought came to him that he wanted very badly to know this elegant woman with the smile that came to her lips so easily, and the graceful manner._

"_Allow me to re-make your acquaintance," she said, offering her hand with a warm smile. "I'm Irene English."_

_But Shirley Blythe had used to know her as Irene Howard._

_Shirley proposed to Irene, and he was so excited to introduce her to his family, who had long wanted him to be married. But the Blythes were a tight-knit clan, and they only remembered Irene from her girlhood, when she, like any other young person, was still learning how to show other people the truth of what she felt in her heart. Norman Douglas has another saying, and one of them is that 'Elephants have long memories—but so do the Blythes of Glen St. Mary.' _

_And the Blythes of Glen St. Mary did not give Irene English a fair chance. _

_They were never outright rude to her—at least, not the grownups. They had too many manners for that. But they never quite made all the effort they could to let her in. There are so many of them, you see, and they had grown quite used to relying on others instead of 'outsiders.' Even though Irene was pretty and kind and fun, they closed their circle to her—out of habit, not out of meanness. _

_But Shirley's nieces and nephews_ _acted a bit more purposefully. They were afraid that if Irene married their uncle, they would lose him, somehow. And they loved him too much for that. They told themselves that they only were acting in their uncle Shirley's best interest, but really, they were being a little selfish. And as things sometime happen, they snowballed out of control. They listened to rumor and innuendo, and not their own hearts. _

_And so the wedding between Shirley Blythe and Irene English was called off, which you would think would make them happy, but it didn't. Uncle Shirley was sad, and they hated to see him so. And they missed Irene—her bright colors, and the _spice_ she brought to things. _

_Uncle Shirley went back to Caraway House, which was still a bachelor pad, and everyone knew it that it always would be, after that. Because once a man like Uncle Shirley has given his heart to someone else to keep, he never asks for it back. It is gone for good. And Shirley's nieces and nephews realized they had made a huge mistake. They would rather see less of their uncle, and see him happy, than to have all of him, so full of sorrow. _

_So they decided to go to Irene English, and ask her to change her mind about him. If she will marry him, he will have her, for he loves her, and always will. And everyone—child and adult—has learned a lesson about love in general, and how to give it—and how to give it to uncle Shirley's bride, in particular, for she is worthy of it, and besides—she already has it. _

Here Sally ended, and folded her papers with trembling hands. She was too full of emotion to speak. As she had read, she had stolen little glances at Irene and was moved by the emotions that played over her face. A silence went on and on, and nobody spoke. Finally, Walt did.

"Only you can write the end to Sally's story, Aunt Irene," he said seriously. "Will it be a happy ending—or a sad one?"

Irene had one slim white hand at her throat. "Does he really—and would he really—oh! Do you think he wants to marry me, still?"

"Athk him yourthelf," piped up a voice, and everyone turned to the doorway, where the Ford twins stood with Uncle Shirley. They had run as fast as their legs would carry them up to Caraway House the moment that Sally had begun to read, and their faces showed the exertion of their trip. Uncle Shirley had been annoyed to be pulled away from his breakfast—but now his face was softly aglow, for the first time in days, a love-light burning away down deep in his dark eyes.

He crossed the room to Irene and shocked the children by kneeling before her, and resting his head in her lap. The cousins had never seen a display of love so fervent—not from their parents—not even from their grandparents, who were the embodiment of years worth of romantic feeling. Uncle Shirley looked exactly like a knight in a storybook, paying fealty to his queen. Even Bess Golden would have been shaken by the image that he made. Sally nearly flew to pieces to think that her writing had had a part in making it happen.

They all held their breath as Irene's hand came tentatively up. Would she say no? Would she tell Shirley to go away? Her hand hovered a moment, and then—then!—it rested gently on Uncle Shirley's dark hair. "Oh, Shirley," Irene breathed with a sob of relief in her voice, and Uncle Shirley lifted his face and the cousins made for the door as fast as their legs would carry them. They were still learning things about life all the time but they knew, already, when to cut and run.

By suppertime the wedding that never happened was back on.


	26. When All is Said and Done

Shirley Blythe married Irene English in the parlour at Ingleside the next day. It was grimly overcast, and pattering rain, but nobody noticed or cared, and the bride and groom seemed happy that nothing about this day was like the other.

Irene did not wear her wedding dress. She wore a simple cream suit and a darling, peacocked feathered hat. She carried no flowers, but did not need them. The groom wore his wedding suit, but the strained look on his face of the past few days was gone. In its place he wore an expression of pure joy.

There was no music, or song, or guests, save for the happy family. The Rev. Jerry Meredith read the ceremony with no embellishments, and Sally hung back with Helen's hand in her own, not even missing her bridesmaid dress. It was as simple a wedding as could be, but the meaning was somehow clearer for all that: this was two people, joining together for life. It was forever. And it was a joy to them all.

Irene's face was as bright as it ever was as she and the groom took their leave. Even the honeymoon destination was changed—they would be going to Havana and the Bahamas for a week's time. Uncle Shirley's coupe was hastily loaded, and everyone fluttered around, saying their last goodbyes. It was, as Faith Blythe remarked with a roll of her eyes, as though they were leaving for a year! But everyone knew a week without Uncle Shirley—and especially Aunt Irene!—would seem a year. They had gotten used to her chatter, her song, her ways.

Irene hugged each of the cousins in turn, long and hard. "Goodbye you dear, dear people!" she trilled. "Oh, we're going to bring you some fabulous presents! I've got to _show_ you how grateful I am for what you've done. You sweet things! This wedding was the wedding of my dreams—I was so happy that I didn't even miss the fuss a bit. I don't even mind that there were no pictures—for the parlour _is_ a little shabby, you know. But to me it will always be the sweetest, most wonderful place on earth because it's where I married my man! Oh, Shirley-John, I'm coming, there's no need to blare the horn—"

The cousins watched the car pull out of the drive. Once, Irene's words would have rankled deeply in their souls but now they did not mind them. It was just—_Irene_, when all was said and done. They loved her—they could not help loving her, despite her prickly places—just as she loved them, despite theirs.

"I'll never like her," said Claire Meredith staunchly. "But I am glad that things turned out the way they did. I would have felt guilty my whole life if they hadn't."

"Irene is a Blythe now," said Walt, his hands in his pockets. "She's one of us. And if anybody says anything bad about her, it will be like an attack on all of us."

"I'll thrash whoever dares," promised Cam, and they knew he meant it. Martin Douglas could attest to that.

Soon the car had rounded the bend—Irene waved her hat one last time—and they were gone. One by one, the little group went in, to find diversion after the excitement of the day. It would be difficult, but they were determined. Sally heard the radio come on, and the _Cliquot Club_ start, but she stayed where she was, as the shadows lengthened, and the white moths came out to butt against the window screens, trying to get at the light beyond.

In the past short weeks, she had learned so much about herself. Her capacity for love—the feeling of true sorrow, and truer regret—the sadness of change—and though change hurt her, she had the sense that something wonderful lingered just around the bend for her. There were new adventures. New stories to write. New friends, both imaginative—she thought of the characters she would write—and real—she thought of the Goldens. Aunt Di would be married in the fall and already she looked forward to that—school would start—she would not rue this summer passing, because she would have a nice long visit with the cousins at Christmastime. And farther off, around that bend, perhaps there was a boy waiting for her, who would look at Sally the way that Uncle Shirley had looked at Irene. The thought thrilled her to her fingertips.

Sally leaned her chin against the porch rail and stared out over the fields in the gloaming. She caught the barest glimpse of the Harbor Light—tonight, from the garret, she would see its star. She was home. Inside the house were all the people she loved. She heard her father groan as the private line rang. She heard her mother's low voice as she followed him to the study for his bag, her bright, sunny laugh. She pictured her cousins sprawled around the radio, Aunt Di and Uncle Carl walking hand in hand in Rainbow Valley. Grandmother and Grandfather sitting out on the verandah, in back, with Grandmother's silvery head on his shoulder. So many wonderful things were in store for them all.

But she must write the ending of this tale before she could move on to the next. It must be a fitting one, to capture the promise of the years to come. She looked out over the lawn and closed her eyes, a smile coming to her lips.

"'And they all lived happily ever after,'" quoth Sally the Bard.


End file.
